{"id":118446,"date":"2025-09-04T14:44:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T14:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/118446\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T14:44:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T14:44:09","slug":"american-eagle-sees-sales-boom-amid-sydney-sweeney-ad-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/118446\/","title":{"rendered":"American Eagle sees sales boom amid Sydney Sweeney ad controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"

American Eagle Outfitters’ shares have surged 26 per cent in premarket trading on Thursday, fuelled by renewed shopper interest in the retailer following a controversial jeans ad campaign featuring actor Sydney Sweeney.<\/p>\n

The ‘Great Jeans’ campaign, which faced backlash on social media over perceived racial undertones related to genetic traits, nonetheless delivered what Chief Marketing Officer Craig Brommers called “unprecedented new customer acquisition”, during the company’s post-earnings call on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Sydney Sweeney ad backlash explained<\/a><\/p>\n

Actor Sydney Sweeney’s “good jeans” advertisement has sparked a debate about beauty standards and race.\u00a0<\/p>\n

American Eagle is also benefiting from its partnership with National Football League (NFL) star Travis Kelce’s clothing brand Tru Kolors, further amplifying the company’s reach among young shoppers.<\/p>\n

The company said that customer counts were up more than 700,000 since the launch of the campaigns with Ms Sweeney and Mr Kelce, and the ads had generated 40 billion impressions.<\/p>\n

Launched last week, the “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” campaign drew criticism<\/a> over what appeared to be a wordplay on “genes”, which netizens said alluded to the discredited racial superiority theory of eugenics.<\/p>\n

American Eagle is banking on celebrity-led campaigns to win over Gen Z and boost demand among shoppers who are pulling back on spending amid economic uncertainty.<\/p>\n

“Q2 results eased concerns around execution and proved marketing momentum is translating into sales,” said Lale Akoner, global market analyst at eToro.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The campaign has been criticised for alluding to eugenics theory and being “tone deaf”.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 (Reuters: David ‘Dee’ Delgado)<\/p>\n

American Eagle executives said on Wednesday that they would keep the momentum from the ad campaigns going.<\/p>\n

“‘Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans’ is not going anywhere. Sydney will be part of our team as we get into the back half of the year, and we’ll be introducing new elements of the campaign as we continue forward,” Mr Brommers added.<\/p>\n

American Eagle forecast flat annual comparable sales, compared with analysts’ estimate of a 1.1 per cent drop.<\/p>\n

“(The) collaborations were, and are, genius in successfully driving traffic, conversion and sales. These collaborations are only getting started \u2026 with the NFL season on the horizon and more to come from both collaborations in a meaningful way during the holiday season,” Barclays analyst Adrienne Yih wrote in a note.<\/p>\n

American Eagle’s forward price-to-earnings multiple, a common benchmark for valuing stocks, is 13.05, compared with peers Abercrombie & Fitch’s 8.94 and Urban Outfitters’ 12.13.<\/p>\n

Short interest in American Eagle, whose shares were trading at $17.09 premarket, stood at 16.6 per cent of public float, per data compiled by LSEG.<\/p>\n

Reuters\/ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"American Eagle Outfitters’ shares have surged 26 per cent in premarket trading on Thursday, fuelled by renewed shopper…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[34193,83819,64,63,99,7882,6528,83820,30000,83821],"class_list":{"0":"post-118446","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-ad-campaign","9":"tag-american-eagle-outfitters","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-controversy","14":"tag-eugenics","15":"tag-great-jeans","16":"tag-sydney-sweeney","17":"tag-sydney-sweeney-has-great-jeans"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}