Photo Contribution: Forbes
In a recent ad for American Eagle, actress Sydney Sweeney was prominently featured. The ad sparked controversy for a plethora of reasons. A few months ago, Sweeney did another ad for Dr. Squash soap, which featured, ‘Sydney Sweeney Bathwater Soap.” This of course had its own criticisms of being overly provocative and odd. Many people were shocked that she would spring for an American Eagle ad after this backlash. Nonetheless, she appeared in another sultry ad, targeted for the male audience. Although the soap ad was indeed a soap mainly for men, the jeans ad was for women. In addition to this, the ad’s most prominent slogan was, “Sydney Sweeney has great genes.” Obviously, this was a play on the homophone, jeans/genes; however, the public did not take it as such.
At first, there was small amounts of discourse over the matter, hiding only in the debate and controversy sides of social media. However when right-wing conservatives took to Twitter or Tiktok, they called out others for claiming the ad was eugenic and out of touch, sparking outrage across the internet
The main argument against the ad was that it was indeed eugenic, the belief that one race’s genes are better than another’s. This ideology was prominently used during the Holocaust in WW2 and began to be rooted in antisemitism. American Eagle argued that it was not their intention for the ad to sound offensive, and while that may be true, Sydney Sweeney is blond-haired and blue-eyed, making the “great genes/jeans” slogan come off extremely poorly. Many thought that targeting a male audience for a women’s jeans advertisement was contradictory and would reduce American Eagle’s sales. Although the company only dropped 3% compared to last year’s sales, this is not enough to conclude that the ad had any link to this statistic. However, the specific jeans Sweeney was selling sold out at record speed. which could lead you to, of course, argue the ethics of an advertisement like this. Some could ask: Is it really reasonable to provoke outrage for money? However, one could also ask: Was it truly something that needed to be so controversial, if it was such a big deal, how come most people didn’t care? In a poll by The Hill, only about 12% had a strong opinion against it, which leads one to truly consider how offensive it was.
Through all this debate, GAP released its own jeans ad featuring the K-pop group, Katseye. The group started in 2024 and consists of six members. The ad featured the members of the group dancing to the popular 2000s hit, Milkshake by Kelis. The song contains the line, “It’s better than yours,” referring to how GAP jeans are “better than yours,” had hundreds of thousands of individuals dancing online. Katseye received nothing but praise for the ad, and GAP saw an immediate income increase of more than 4%. Unlike the American Eagle ad, this had nothing but love coming from all corners of the internet. With its joyful music and diverse group of women, a message reflecting inclusiveness and positivity was created and, stemming from a purely marketing standpoint, the ad features the girls dancing in the jeans, showing how versatile they are. The public responded so differently to both of these ads, sending hate to Sydney Sweeney’s ad while praising Katseye’s. However you could argue that Katseye, although racially diverse, has a much less inclusive body type and the song has historically been centered around competing for male attention, no matter how iconic the internet makes it seem. As a result of these ads both companies benefited in their own way, so that begs the question: which ad is better? Is it better to appeal to the masses, creating an unproblematic message that is catchy and fun, or create a controversial ad that sparks conversation and debate? At the end of the day, it all comes down to how much media coverage it got. Like the old saying goes, “all press is good press”, and these ads show just how true this saying can be.