‘The biggest get’: With Sydney Sweeney, American Eagle is changing how it works with talent
With a 20-story, 3D billboard in Times Square and an ad on the 366-foot-tall Las Vegas Sphere, American Eagle says it’s thinking “bigger than ever before” for its new marketing campaign with actress and producer Sydney Sweeney.
The company’s fall campaign, titled “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans,” goes live this week and marks a turning point for the Gen-Z denim brand. In addition to posting ads on billboards and buses across the U.S., American Eagle will be “one of the first retail brands” to post campaign-related Snap Stories, the company told Modern Retail. AE’s campaign with Sweeney is also the first time the brand is launching a dedicated broadcast channel on Instagram and advertising on BeReal. And, crucially, with Sweeney, AE is changing how it runs marketing campaigns by hyper-focusing on only one celebrity. In the past, it has featured multiple public figures in ads.
American Eagle’s CMO, Craig Brommers, told Modern Retail that a new strategy was warranted, considering Sweeney — known for her work on “Euphoria” and “The White Lotus” — is “the biggest get in the history of our brand.” “We’ve had a lot of success working with multiple talent in one season, so it’s not like that recipe is dead,” Brommers said. “But there are only a few celebrities that have the cachet to be the face of a dual-gender brand, and Sydney is one of them. When she was into the idea of working with us, that’s when you say, ‘I think this is a special, unique moment, and it needs to feel like that.'”
American Eagle’s ads will show up on social media and in markets including Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Atlanta. Sweeney’s stylist, Molly Dickson, worked with the brand on campaign looks. Sweeney also designed her own American Eagle jeans with a butterfly design. All net proceeds from the jeans will benefit Crisis Text Line.
The campaign is American Eagle’s attempt to “cut through the noise” of cluttered marketing, Brommers said, but it also comes at a time in which the brand is hoping to grow sales. In May, American Eagle’s parent company reported a 5% drop in total net revenue for its first fiscal quarter of 2025, as well as an operating loss of $85 million. “While we are disappointed with the results, we are taking actions to better position the company and drive stronger performance in the upcoming quarters,” American Eagle Outfitters CEO Jay Schottenstein said in a statement.
Sweeney — who has also partnered with the brands Dr. Squatch, Baskin-Robbins and Jimmy Choo — is an ideal partner for American Eagle, considering she’s “at the intersection of fashion, fame and digital culture,” Krishna Subramanian, co-founder and CEO of Captiv8, an end-to-end influencer marketing platform, told Modern Retail. She’s also a member of Gen Z, American Eagle’s biggest audience, and a cohort the brand has tried to court via a Snapchat partnership, pop-ups, Substack and Pinterest.
A new approach
American Eagle’s marketing campaigns have traditionally involved multiple players. Its “Live Your Life” campaign in 2024, for instance, featured tennis star Coco Gauff, football player Trevor Lawrence and actress Nikki Rodriguez. Now, in working with Sweeney, American Eagle is joining other retail brands in zeroing in on one buzzy star. Old Navy, for instance, recently ran a retro-style campaign featuring Lindsay Lohan in aerobic wear.
Celebrity campaigns are nothing new, Subramanian pointed out. But, he said, “what’s changed with celebrity campaigns is that they’re no longer one-dimensional endorsements.”
“The best ones now show up across formats: influencer, social, out-of-home [and] paid media,” he added. “It’s less about just borrowing fame and more about co-creating impact.”
Brommers echoed this point, saying that American Eagle wanted the campaign to feel more “personal.” AE’s Instagram broadcast channel, for instance, “will feel more like a one-on-one conversation [with Sweeney], versus us blasting out content,” he said. With the app BeReal, too, he said, the brand is “trying to make social feel more intimate and friendly.”
Kimberley Ring Allen, founder of Ring Communications and adjunct professor of marketing at Suffolk University, told Modern Retail that it takes more for brands to stand out these days. “Brands need to get more strategic with their ad spend,” she said, especially as costs on platforms like Facebook and Instagram go up. There’s an art to an effective campaign today, Allen said, and something like a huge, 3D video of Sweeney fits that bill. “You can’t stop but look at a billboard or AR [augmented reality],” Allen said. “It’s going to catch your attention.”
While American Eagle is primarily focusing on Sweeney and its back-to-school efforts at this time, the brand still plans to work with creators going forward, Brommers said. American Eagle is building up a network of affiliate partners that it launched earlier this year. But, if the fit is right, the brand is open to doing another star-centered campaign, including a part two with Sweeney, Brommers said.
“At any given time, there is a handful of celebrities that command the mass aspirational value of a large brand like American Eagle, and if one of those people is excited to work with us, then we’ll figure our way into it,” Brommers said.