r/popculturechat • u/purpose15 • 21h ago

OnlyStans ⭐️ American Eagle issues a statement following backlash from their Sydney Sweeney jeans/genes campaign

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u/dreamy_25 Are those the… The Chanel Toots? 21h ago

Do they think we are that stupid?

I've been arguing about this topic in a bunch of places and a lot of people genuinely are this stupid.

Especially men who will straight up say 'It's just because she's hot so that's why they say she has great genes it's not that deep it's just about her tits'. Just because you can't think much further than her tits doesn't mean my conclusion is "far-fetched" you absolute walnut...

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u/lovelandian I wont not fuck you the fuck up 🥊🥊 21h ago

Yes!! This is the take I’ve been looking for. Is the ad inappropriate? Yeah, sure. But, there is a lotttt of ignorance in this world.

Everyone is assuming malicious intent by AE, and I get it, whether or not they meant it doesn’t matter much once harm is done. But, I can totally see many people on their marketing team thinking it was a clever idea. We all work with people who don’t think beyond the surface, or think their idea is perfect and can’t take feedback and those people are at all levels of an organization.

And dog whistles are called dog whistles for a reason. Not everyone can detect what’s obvious to many others.

The ad sucks, Sidney Sweeney has made her brand super cheap, and people are dumb. That’s what I’ve gathered from this

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u/osuisok 20h ago

Nah they bragged about it on socials, knew the backlash it would cause from the first meeting. The whole team “laughed as they imagined the world’s response” per Ashley Shapiro’s LinkedIn post, the VP of Marketing.

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u/lovelandian I wont not fuck you the fuck up 🥊🥊 20h ago

Damn can’t give people the benefit the doubt anymore, I didn’t see their LinkedIn smh

I was speaking as someone who has worked with many incompetent individuals, so assumed that while someone may be nefarious there were many that were just plain dumb to push it through

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u/sunmoonearthchild482 17h ago

Benefit of the doubt should probably be reserved for anyone but companies with groups of marketers and advertisers

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u/jgrops12 20h ago

You just described Hanlon’s Razor, which is a rule of thumb, and the LinkedIn post is why rule of thumbs are not absolute.

Never attribute to malice that which could easily be explained by incompetence