“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color,” Sweeney purrs, while a male narrator closes the spot with the slogan “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”
Some viewers took the message as a joke, but others saw it as a coded reference to the social desirability of being blond-haired, blue-eyed, and white—like Sweeney—and even as support for eugenics.
American Eagle let the fires burn for a few days before issuing a clarifying statement on August 1. But while AE pulled the one provocative ad, it left the campaign and slogan in place—for better or worse.
Genetic wordplay aside, as any first-year business major knows, sexual suggestiveness is part of the marketer’s toolbox—especially in fashion advertising. As history has shown, it can benefit a brand handsomely.
For example, starting in 2007, Nascar driver Danica Patrick appeared in 22 spots for GoDaddy, usually wearing a too-small tank top that struggled to contain her. In a 2009 Super Bowl spot, she took a shower while three frat boys controlled her movements via their computer. Tacky as these ads were, they helped make GoDaddy a household name. When the brand went public in 2015, Patrick was on hand to do pushups on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
But promoting perfect bodies and conventional beauty standards has also backfired. Abercrombie & Fitch turned into a money-printing machine when it began promoting itself with shirtless beefcake boys. But when CEO Mike Jeffries explained the marketing strategy to a reporter—admitting that the brand was “exclusionary” and that appealing to “old” and “fat” people would make A&F “totally vanilla”—millennial shoppers turned on the brand as a symbol of exclusion and discrimination. (A&F has since regained some status among millennials for introducing inclusive sizing and modern, business-friendly attire for young professional women.)