American Eagle: who's laughing?

The new American Eagle advert made me laugh.

Rather - the hue and cry about the American Eagle advert made me laugh.

What I knew about the brand before now: American Eagle has always had a reputation for pushing the limits of tastefulness, from employing female models who appeared to be underage, or showing imagery of slave shackles, to the use of outlawed manufacturing processes.

So when social media blew up over the “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” advert, with claims of racism, white supremacy and Nazi propaganda, I wasn’t as shocked as some.

However, what shocked me more was the fact that industry commentators (some of the advertising world’s muckety mucks) were taking different sides of the debate as if this was a very important matter.

It is not.

It’s a fucking advert that looks like it was scripted and directed using AI.

It is unimaginative.

It is substance over style.

It is American Eagle – what did you expect? The highbrow intellectualism of the ‘Guinness Surfer’, or the cool virality of ‘Levis Launderette’?

Thoughts provoked like Dove’s ‘Real Beauty Sketches’?

Your heart strings being pulled like a John Lewis advert?

No, it is ephemeral and it will not reside in any halls of fame unless those halls happen to be the advertising raspberries.

It’s another Caitlyn Jenner Pepsi advert.

But boy! How we all get hot and bothered about it, as if advertising these days does anything to move the needle of human emotions.

We’re talking about this advert as if it’s either really let the side down or if it’s really pushing limits.

It’s not, but when there’s nothing else to talk about, an advert this insipid gets to take up all the oxygen.

Most advertising these days is nothing more than fish pâté between two bits of cheap white supermarket own brand bread (if the bread is a TV show) - and with this debate, we’re operating under the assumption that advertising actually moves the public discourse, like Benetton used to.

It doesn’t because it’s so disposable. If you really analyze the AE advert, it’s not very substantive, but it is the most substantive advert this week, so we’ll all talk about it as if we really care and then we’ll move on to be offended or shocked by the next one tomorrow.

If marketers really cared, companies would be plowing vast marketing budgets into creativity, rather than vast sums of marketing budgets into social media to keep the likes and follow numbers up for uncreative adverts that peak, then disappear in 24 hours.

I know it lifted the AE share price up. Great. That’s great news for AE shareholders, while it keeps the people who their ads most offend, at each other’s throats.

That’s cheap entertainment for the 1% and well worth the budget.

Why can’t the advertising industry get a grip and wake up to the fact that we’re rewarding mediocrity instead of stirring emotions?

If you want real watercooler moments in advertising, then corporations that need to win the hearts and minds of consumers, need to start finding the sorts of budgets that inspire and reward world class creativity.