In an age of five-second attention spans and hyper-politicized branding, companies are no longer selling products; they’re selling narratives. And sometimes, they’re selling controversies. From American Eagle’s chaotic Sweeney campaign to Elf’s misfire with Matt Rife, brands are betting big on backlash to stay relevant. The White House is declaring an end to “Immoral programs going by the name DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion).” With this, brands have become eager and oftentimes desperate to compete with the lack of attention spans nowadays. A recent influx of ads by American Eagle featured Sydney Sweeney as the face of their campaign. But you may wonder why this is “desperate” or “controversial”. In the weeks leading to the infamous campaign, JPMorgan was preparing to downgrade the American Eagle stock to a classification also known as “Underweight”. In other terms, their stocks were not doing well by any means. In recent years, they haven’t had any social relevance to cling to. Products were not selling, and they needed a way to get out of an existential crisis.
American Eagle executives had then decided to switch to Narrative Arbitrage; if you don’t know what this is, say for example a movie critic raves about the hottest movie. But you just saw it and know full well it was trash, and it didn’t live up to its expectations. They used public discourse (given this political climate) to manufacture a campaign while weaponizing this climate to its fullest extent. That is when Sydney Sweeney (known for Euphoria, Americana, and Anyone But You) came into the picture. It was intentional to say the least. She is deemed a “chaos” by most individuals from an outside perspective. She was not chosen because she was universally loved, nor because she was politically safe. She was selected as she sparks controversy, which, as we all know, has happened. The ad was perfectly placed as it was ambiguous enough while withholding those unsettling cultural undertones that many people noticed. With the infamous line “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans”. Followed by the short snippet of an ad, a longer advertisement came out with a longer dialogue of Sydney Sweeney, which was later turned into a meme. “Jeans are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color… My jeans are blue.” Flirting with themes of eugenics and whiteness in this political atmosphere, this ad was promised to make headlines.
After this multi-million-dollar campaign was launched in a desperate attempt to generate revenue, it did just that. This campaign generated $ 400 million in stock revenue 48 hours after it was launched. Not to mention it skyrocketed in revenue after President Donald Trump claimed, “Sydney Sweeney, a registered republican, has the HOTTEST ad out there”.
This may be good news for American Eagle, but not for Sydney Sweeney. Following her infamous campaign, Sydney has a new film titled Americana co-starring music icon Halsey. The movie was released on August 15th in over 1000 theaters, giving a 500k opening weekend, making it Sydney Sweeney’s worst box office opening of all time. After this controversy, a dig was made at Sydney Sweeney at the Emmy Awards on September 14th. “I have a blue jean tux on for some reason.” “Do we have a joke? This ‘joke’ was made by Nate Bargatze.
Following the release of American Eagle’s campaign, other companies had taken the jump on controversial ads to garner more attention. One of these companies is Elf. As we know, Elf has cemented itself as a brand that offers affordable products, even though I have bought from them. Recently, Elf announced they would be raising prices due to “Trump’s tariffs placed upon China, as they still manufacture in China and have to raise prices”. This sparked an online outburst, with comments following the announcement, with some saying on X (formerly known as Twitter), “You mean pure greed.” This comes after Elf bought Rhode Beauty from Hailey Bieber for $1 billion.
With the past repeating itself, Elf decides to take on a global campaign starring Matt Rife (Comedian/Internet Personality) and Heidi N Closet (Drag Queen/Comedian).
While this in itself could be deemed coherently good, it was not by any means for Elf’s standards.
Elf is a brand used primarily by women, and using a man who uses women as a punch line for a joke isn’t clicking for consumers. Even when I first saw the AD, I was perplexed. In his Netflix special, which put him out of the spotlight for obvious reasons, in his blunt opening, he says, “Yeah, I feel like if she could cook, she wouldn’t have that black eye.” Outlets deemed this as insensitive and how this put him out of the spotlight, especially by what was once his dominant female audience. Elf did the same thing, just like American Eagle did; they used a person who would generate controversy for headlines and relevance for their brand once again. After the ad controversy started with comments circulating on X once the ad came forward, “Great, I’m not buying ELF ever,” generating 3.3k likes. Another one being “Matt is a bigot and openly misogynistic. Why would you put him in an ad and intentionally alienate your largest demographic audience?” generating 2.3k, and the list goes on with comments criticizing the brand and their choice of a person to market. Another one bites the dust.
In other words, in marketing, especially for “Good Jeans”, recently GAP has decided to use the global phenomenon Katseye in their new campaign. Following the campaign, 8/21 GAP has garnered over 20M streams, and their market is going up 2.17% and is expected to do higher this month. As of 9/1, the GAP CEO announced that the AD garnered over 400 million views and 8 billion impressions across all social media platforms. The advertisement performed better than their last four releases combined.
Articles deemed this ad to show how “it’s done” and how to do an advertising campaign. They are a diverse singing group breaking charts and are highly relevant, without being controversial, in the marketing and political world. Another jean campaign done by Lucky Brand uses Addison Rae as their muse in their campaign on 8/21, with comments saying “Addison Rae has great jeans” or “This is a better ad” coming off of X (formerly known as Twitter).
With these other campaigns coming out, will brands realize you don’t need propaganda to promote a campaign? In the real world, young adults and students can read between the blurred lines, especially in marketing. So why use it? After all, the majority of these campaigns are marketed for back-to-school shopping, and a lot of these parents don’t want their children to buy from a brand that will try to manipulate, or even I wouldn’t want to spend my money on a brand that’s been getting a bad reputation, especially online, through posts made by peers or other teenagers. It’s not just about who has the best jeans. It’s about which brands respect the intelligence of the people wearing them. Yet in the end, who knows, but what we know for sure is that no matter who you are, everyone has good jeans.
