The brand has been criticized for celebrating the actor’s “great genes” in a campaign that has driven both attention and stock prices.
Sydney Sweeney
American Eagle has launched a major new ad campaign fronted by actor Sydney Sweeney. At first glance, it seems innocuous – built around the tagline “great jeans,” it’s a not-so-original series of videos and glossy shots of the star. But the brand has found itself in the middle of a PR firestorm. Because while the campaign promotes denim, it also celebrates something else: Sweeney’s “great” blue-eyed, blonde-haired genes.
In one ad, Sweeney stands before a poster of herself bearing the caption: “Sydney Sweeney has great genes.” The word “genes” is crossed out and replaced with “jeans.” In another spot, the actor lies on a couch, explaining: “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My genes are blue.” A male narrator then adds: “Sydney Sweeney has great genes.” Or maybe he means jeans. That ambiguity is left deliberately unresolved.
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Some have interpreted the campaign as the promotion of eugenics, “white supremacy” and even “Nazi propaganda.”
“They’re making a play on jeans and the word genes, as in genetics. They’re doing this at a brand called American Eagle Outfitters, in the context of US 2025, at a moment where we are experiencing all kinds of reverberations from the changes in policy coming from the White House and what we understand to be the agenda around Project 2025 that is looking to dismantle the progress we’ve made to become a more unified and diverse society,” says Lola Bakare, a marketing advisor and author of Responsible Marketing.
“You have to think about a brand’s decisions in a moment like this, in a context like this, very carefully because we know how much thinking and planning go into these huge launches.”
For Bakare, the problem isn’t in the pun. It’s who the brand chose to represent it. Sweeney is, to some, an ideal of “genetic purity” that, for many Americans, resonates uncomfortably with the anti-DEI rhetoric coming out of Washington right now.
“There is nothing wrong with beautiful people being used in advertising. That’s an idea as old as time. But we have gotten to a day and age where, especially if you’re looking to attract Gen Z and the definition of what beauty is has expanded, that to contract that definition back to something like what we’re seeing, in addition to the overlay of the language... it questions the motivation of what the folks who made the decisions could have been trying to achieve. Or, more importantly, what they may have ignored in the process of launching the campaign.”
In the current political and social climate, it’s hard to imagine that American Eagle’s marketing team didn’t anticipate some level of controversy. The campaign, which landed during the peak back-to-school marketing rush, has also been criticized for seemingly taking inspiration from a 1980 Calvin Klein ad starring a 15-year-old Brooke Shields.
Dr Anastasia Gabriel is a cultural theorist and author. She believes the work was always destined to fall flat with younger generations (American Eagle’s primary audience) who are more progressive, socially aware and chronically online than any generation before them. Even without considering any racist undertones, the brand’s marketers seemed to acknowledge that they were “pushing it” with how Sweeney came across on screen.
She asks: “How was a teenage customer who looks nothing like Sweeney supposed to feel after seeing this? How were the Gen Z girls supposed to relate to the ad with its ‘no, eyes up here!’ messaging as the camera zoomed in on Sweeney’s breasts? In 2025, the marketing leadership should possess cultural intelligence and media literacy – or hire people who do – to foresee how the verbal and visual language used to communicate to their audiences would be interpreted by them.”
For some, the biggest problem with the work is simply lazy wordplay in fairly uninspired and unoriginal ads fronted by one of Hollywood’s current darlings. It’s obvious, sure, but not offensive. And the current controversy is boosting what was mundane marketing to a level that will inevitably help sales.
Marketing professor Mark Ritson wrote on LinkedIn: “Nothing in this ad runs against American Eagle’s brand positioning. The crisis about to emerge is coming from external narratives, not internal errors. And the relatively minor status of the American Eagle brand for most current fashion buyers means that whatever the company loses in sales from a few super radical trendies, it will surely win a hundredfold back from consumers who don’t care, don’t see any of the nonsense, but who are suddenly aware and readily salient for a brand that they never thought of before.”
Asad Dhunna is CEO of The Unmistakables, a brand consultancy that’s worked with HSBC and Unilever on their inclusion strategies. He’s dubious of the suggestion that the American Eagle marketing team has deliberately sought to antagonize. A subsequent “panicked” post on the brand’s Instagram of a racially ambiguous woman in what appears to be a campaign image suggests that it might be “frantically trying to course correct.” It has also since removed a number of videos from Instagram and YouTube where Sweeney references her “great genes.”
“But let’s say in this instance it did know what it was doing at every step,” Dhunna muses. “It went beyond wordplay to play us all, taking a risky bet to own the ‘Trad Wife x Womanosphere’ market. In this scenario, American Eagle won’t care who it has offended and as it has seen the short-term share price jump that will see it through a few months, it will consider this a job well done. Offsetting outrage sends a signal to us of what matters if it is satisfied with the target market expanding. It’s a risky strategy.”
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And that, perhaps, is the heart of the issue. While it’s too early to scrutinize direct sales data, American Eagle’s share price has surged and the brand’s value was up by as much as 18% in the week since the campaign launched, earning it a so-called ‘memestock’ status. Despite any negativity on social media, the markets seem to have responded in its favor – for now.
It’s what makes Ted Kohnen, CEO of Park & Battery, less convinced there wasn’t some level of deliberate orchestration from the leadership team when we “live in a time when outrage is a growth channel.”
“Wordplay or not, in today’s climate, a tagline of ‘great genes’ doesn’t land as innocent. The more polarized the reaction, the more reach a brand earns. Social media turns a questionable tagline into a trending topic. And most consumers? They’re not reading think-pieces. They’re buying jeans. This campaign sparked accusations of eugenics-adjacent messaging and cultural insensitivity. But you know what else it did? Drove attention, conversation and, apparently, stock price. That tells you everything about how controversy plays in the modern marketing economy.”
Kohnen adds: “That’s the real tension here. Brands want cultural relevance, but not necessarily responsibility. Some see this as a calculated risk. Others just see the upside. Either way, we’re well past the era where a misstep guarantees brand damage. Sometimes, it’s the strategy.”
If true, Bakare sees this as emblematic of the short-term thinking plaguing marketers today. “I thought CMOs were looking to sell products and connect with consumers to create lifetime relationships that lead to durable sales and long-term gains, not a five-day share price bump. Is that a determinant of campaign success?
“We’re going to be able to say it worked when we have figures from its back-to-school sales. And I’m going to put money on the fact that it’s not going to look good – it’s going to be a Target or Bud Light-type situation when it comes to the bottom line and impact of the decisions made.”
For now, it’s anyone’s guess how this strategy – intentional or not – will play out long term. American Eagle has yet to publicly acknowledge the critical discourse and Sydney Sweeney has not issued a statement.
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Further reading: If you work in advertising, you don’t get to use the ‘just an ad’ excuse