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Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ad loses the company a million customers, libs won
| hagia shrewphia | 09/30/25 |
| Rabbi Nahasapeemapetilon | 09/30/25 |
| Bill Laimbeer circa 1990 | 09/30/25 |
| lfo | 09/30/25 |
Poast new message in this thread
Date: September 30th, 2025 8:32 AM Author: hagia shrewphia ‘You Can’t Run From Fear’: American Eagle’s CEO on the Sydney Sweeney Fallout Jay Schottenstein, company’s 71-year-old chief, has uncanny ability to discern what young shoppers want
American Eagle Outfitters’ chief executive had a message for staff when a Sydney Sweeney ad campaign blew up the internet: Hold tight.
He instructed executives to stay calm and directed employees not to comment on the ads. He put a small team in charge of monitoring social-media posts and hired a firm to poll customers. The company didn’t pull any of the ads.
“You can’t run from fear,” Jay Schottenstein, the billionaire CEO behind American Eagle, said in his first interview on the subject. “We stand behind what we did.”
Schottenstein personally approved the ads before they began airing on July 23. They showed Sweeney, an actress known for her role in the HBO series “Euphoria,” dressed suggestively in denim. The campaign’s tagline: “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans.”
“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color,” Sweeney said in one ad. “My jeans are blue.”
Some people called the double entendre racist. Others called the ads sexist. Even President Trump weighed in. “Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the ‘HOTTEST’ ad out there,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Some marketing pundits predicted that the culture-war uproar would drain American Eagle’s sales and dent its reputation as similar controversies had for companies like Cracker Barrel, Target and Anheuser-Busch InBev.
Instead, American Eagle’s sales improved after the Sweeney campaign began and sales growth turned positive in August, the company said. The Sweeney ads helped bring in nearly a million new customers between July and September. The Sweeney Cinched Waist denim jacket sold out in a day, and the Sydney Jean, an ultrawide leg with a butterfly on the back pocket, sold out in a week.
Polling commissioned by the company showed that many customers viewed the ads favorably, Schottenstein said on a recent afternoon in his New York office, where he wore a hunter green sweater and jeans from the Italian fashion house Kiton, black Dior sneakers and a Patek Philippe watch.
American Eagle avoided a backlash because—unlike other brands—it leaned in and stayed the course, said Susan Cantor, chief executive of Sterling Brands, a consumer branding company.
“By sticking to their guns, they gained customers,” she said.
Schottenstein, an Orthodox Jew, was perplexed at the criticism that the campaign smacked of eugenics, the Nazi-embraced theory that selective reproduction can advance the human race. He said his mother-in-law grew up in Nazi Germany and watched as the synagogue across the street from her home was burned to the ground.
“I’m very conscious of that term,” Schottenstein said. He said that if he and his team had felt the campaign would be offensive in that way, “we never would’ve done it.”
Schottenstein uses a Yiddish word to describe his long-held goal for American Eagle: “to put a pair of jeans on every tuchis in the United States.”
The 71-year-old has an uncanny ability to discern what young shoppers want. The storm over the Sweeney ads was still blowing when American Eagle unveiled a collaboration with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and his Tru Kolors clothing brand—the day after Kelce and Taylor Swift announced their engagement.
Lucky timing, perhaps. But Schottenstein works hard at being a teen whisperer. He surrounds himself with people of diverse ages, backgrounds and beliefs and asks a lot of questions. His three sons and nine grandchildren are a particularly helpful focus group. Basketball star LeBron James counts him as a friend.
James became friendly with the Schottensteins while playing state championship basketball at the Schottenstein Center on the Ohio State campus. In 2009, James nominated Schottenstein for Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people. “We have a huge relationship,” James told Cleveland.com in 2016.
Maverick Carter, a longtime friend and business partner of both James and Schottenstein who runs an entertainment company, describes meeting Schottenstein as “a young African-American kid from the inner city of Akron, Ohio.”
“He wanted to understand how I looked at the world,” Carter recalled. “He’ll ask me 100 questions before I can ask him one.”
Schottenstein also stays current by traveling. While visiting Israel with his granddaughters in 2017, he noticed they were going wild for flow ring bracelets that looked like slinkies. He tracked down the manufacturer and sold them in American Eagle stores, generating nearly $1 million in sales.
Schottenstein has honed his instincts over decades in a retail business founded by his grandfather, Ephraim, a Lithuanian immigrant, who opened a department store in Columbus, Ohio, in 1917.
Through holding companies and family trusts, Jay Schottenstein owns or has stakes in dozens of businesses, from shoe retailer DSW and furniture company American Signature to a Napa Valley winery and a luxury men’s clothing store in Milan.
He owns roughly 7.8% of American Eagle Outfitters, a publicly traded company that controls four apparel retail chains, including loungewear brand Aerie and men’s clothing retailer Todd Snyder.
Jennifer Foyle, president and executive creative director of American Eagle and Aerie, said she wakes up to morning texts from her boss about new ideas he wants to try. “It’s a constant Shark Tank,” she said, referring to the TV show where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a group of investors.
American Eagle regularly tops the list of denim brands favored by Gen Z consumers. It was the No. 1 jeans brand in the U.S. for people ages 15 to 25 in the 12 months that ended in July, according to market-research firm Circana.
Those ads Sweeney did for American Eagle aren’t going anywhere. She is the brand’s ambassador for the rest of the year. “Syd’s Picks,” a collection of Sweeney’s favorite American Eagle items—including a low-rise jean, lace tank top and utility jacket—will continue to be featured on its website. And the Sydney Jean will be restocked in November. |
Date: September 30th, 2025 8:35 AM Author: Rabbi Nahasapeemapetilon (✅🍑) LJL, shitcons, your response? (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5781420&forum_id=2),#49313856) |
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Date: September 30th, 2025 8:43 AM Author: Bill Laimbeer circa 1990 because the guy is Jewish the lugenpresse never sicced the dogs on him. the backlash was suffocated in its cradle.
if it had been Marge Schott CEO, ADL would own the company now, CEO would be in a mental hospital. |
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Date: September 30th, 2025 8:48 AM Author: lfo Schottenstein, an Orthodox Jew, was perplexed at the criticism Schottenstein, an Orthodox Jew, was perplexed at the criticism Schottenstein, an Orthodox Jew, was perplexed at the criticism Schottenstein, an Orthodox Jew, was perplexed at the criticism Schottenstein, an Orthodox Jew, was perplexed at the criticism |