American Eagle is in full-on crisis mode after their “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” campaign was met by swift public backlash as critics accused the ad of invoking eugenics. Today, the clothing company finally put out a statement explaining the campaign’s original aim: American Eagle is clarifying that their Sydney Sweeney ad was only intended to make people masturbate.
Wow. It’s easy to see how American Eagle’s intended messaging got lost in the execution. Good intentions or not, the damage to their brand may already be done.
Check out American Eagle’s public statement below:
We hear you. Our “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” campaign missed the mark. Our intention was purely to inspire you to masturbate to images of Sydney Sweeney wearing our clothes. We had no ulterior purpose or message to convey beyond “get yourself off on these close-up shots of Sydney Sweeney’s body in tight-fitting denim.” That’s it. That people viewed our ad as promoting eugenics, and not as sexual fodder they could think about while pleasuring themselves in the shower, or wherever they masturbate to images of buxom women like Sydney Sweeney, breaks out heart. Perhaps our messaging could’ve been clearer. Maybe a more literal slogan such as “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Breasts And Buttocks For You To Masturbate To” would’ve spared our brand all this trouble. It’s too late to know. All we can do now is officially condemn any and all ideologies that endorse eugenics, and promise to do better.
– American Eagle
Yikes. What a catastrophic mistake this marketing strategy turned out to be. American Eagle only wanted their Sydney Sweeney ad to make people touch themselves, but instead, it made millions of Internet users call them Nazis. Well, you can bet whichever American Eagle employee came up with this campaign is looking for a new job now!
