Mark Ritson is a former marketing professor, brand consultant and an award-winning columnist. He is also the founder of the MiniMBA in Marketing, a ten-week training program for senior managers who missed or have forgotten their marketing fundamentals. Sign up here.
American Eagle Outfitters’ Q2 earnings added yet another contested chapter to the company’s advertising-led turnaround story.
While sales were flat and margins down, CEO Jay Schottenstein was bullish about the company’s outlook – partly because of the much-debated Sydney Sweeney campaign that launched late July.
This news and after-hours trading that saw the company’s stock soar more than 20%, will bolster those on the right, who saw the Sweeney campaign as prime evidence of a movement away from “woke” advertising.
Other equally vocal critics, who objected to perceived hints of racism and even eugenics, believed the subsequent social uproar around these negative themes proved that the ads would hurt the American Eagle brand.
But marketers actually trained in marketing held back and left the interpretations to pundits, politicians, and advertising amateurs.
Marketers are not the consumer
Market orientation translates into a simple but crucial rubric: you are not the consumer.
If you make the product or the ad, you’re the last person on the planet who can judge its quality because you aren’t the target market, and even if you are, you are literally one in a million and your views are unlikely to be representative.
Good marketers know they know nothing. That’s why they need market research.
Almost everyone who opined about American Eagle last month was too old to be part of the target market.
The real Sydney Sweeney controversy had nothing to do with genes and everything to do with marketers abandoning basic marketing principles for hot takes on a campaign designed for consumers they’d never met, shopping in stores they’d never visited, for products they’d never buy.
And the same goes for the self-fulfilling snatches of evidence used to critique or justify the campaign.
Traffic into American Eagle stores did dip the week after the campaign launched. But it dipped for most of the brand’s competitors too. H&M, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Urban Outfitters all suffered similar drops.
Similarly, the social engagement around the campaign signaled many things, but not necessarily an imminent marketing success. Despite what growth marketers tell you, there is such a thing as bad publicity. It’s called “bad publicity.”