“I really think social media noise is one thing, but customer performance is really what you should be basing your decisions on. So this is not about emotions, it’s about facts and data. And because of that, we were able to confidently execute this campaign. I think that ‘Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans’ is the prime example that marketing works. In this case, marketing drove culture, product sales, stock price.”

What’s next?  

“The [marketing] mandate is clear: We’ve got to continue to drive buzz and we’ve got to continue to drive the business. From a driving the buzz perspective, I have the permission to make big swings. We have the swagger to take big swings, and you’re going to see that with talent, with music, with sports, with experiences as well.”

Would you do anything differently?  

“I really believe things happen for a reason. You can tell yourself you’re managing a crisis, or you can tell yourself you are optimizing an opportunity, and we chose the latter, and that has been the mindset that we will continue to have.”

Biggest lesson?

“The first one is social media noise is intense, and it’s hard not to listen and not to react, but sometimes not doing anything is actually the smartest strategy possible. And just looking at factual, accurate, real-time data and making decisions based on that is way more important than the swirl of social media.”

True partnership:

“When you decide to partner with boldface talent, you have to live up to the essence of what that means. It’s a partnership. In our specific case, Sydney Sweeney stuck with us. We stuck with her. And because of that, I think that it allowed both brands to come out of this experience even stronger.”

Would you do it again?

“The results speak for themselves. I get paid to deliver shareholder value. I get paid to create memorable experiences for our customers. I get to reflect the values of our brand and our corporation. And I think that these campaigns [with Sweeney and Travis Kelce] both did that.”