More than two months after American Eagle’s campaign starring actress Sydney Sweeney ignited a national debate after some perceived it as a eugenics reference, chief marketing officer (CMO) Craig Brommers is still navigating the news cycle.
“Just this last Saturday night, this was still in the news. This was on SNL,” he said on stage at ADWEEK House: Advertising HQ on Thursday. “I can’t believe that anything in our advertising marketing world is still commanding this amount of attention 10 weeks later.”
In a candid conversation with ADWEEK’s chief brand and community Officer Jenny Rooney, Brommers shared for the first time in front of a public audience how he navigated the weeks of debate and discourse sparked by the campaign—and why his approach veered from the typical brand crisis playbook.
“The goal really was not to participate in culture, but to define culture,” Brommers said of the campaign. “This has exceeded those wildest dreams.”
Stock surge to backlash
When the campaign launched on a Friday in late June, the initial response was overwhelmingly positive. American Eagle’s stock shot up 25% on the day of the launch, which was announced with widespread coverage across financial, entertainment, retail, and marketing press.
By the weekend, the tone had shifted.
“I vividly remember sitting down, having a cup of coffee, and opening LinkedIn and reading really nasty comments for the first time,” Brommers recalled. “It just stopped me. I was like, ‘whoa, where is this coming from?’”
Negative sentiment peaked the following Monday, which Brommers emphasized was the only day during the campaign’s 10-week run when criticism outweighed support.
“Some people say this campaign was swamped by negativity. It is absolutely not true,” he said.
But as the narrative began to shift, Brommers quickly assembled a small team of internal and external partners to come up with a strategy centered on restraint. “On one hand, we had to do something very quickly, and on the other hand, we did nothing,” he said.