Astronomer, American Eagle, Sydney Sweeney.
The Real Problem Isn’t Marketing. It’s Us.
What Astronomer, American Eagle, and Sydney Sweeney Teach Us About Marketing, Morality, and Mob Mentality
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Branding in the age of outrage
In branding, we say perception is reality. But in today’s culture wars, reaction is reality, especially when it’s loud, fast, and weaponized.
One second, you’re selling jeans. Next, you’re dodging PR landmines, trying to explain why a celebrity is or isn’t on your side of the political divide.
But first, a story:
After executing a controversial acquisition, a CEO hired me to help reposition their brand. Their problem wasn’t political. It was personal. The founder had sold to a much larger company, and loyal customers were furious; they felt like they had been in the inner sanctum and now they felt betrayed.
In the boardroom, I was asked, “How do we reassure people that we’re still the brand they love?”
My answer: “You don’t. You show them who you’re going to be next. And then you decide if you’re brave enough to stay consistent when the heat comes.”
They blinked. Then someone said, “That sounds hard.”
Yes. Yes, it is.
Astronomer, American Eagle, and the Cost of Going Viral
Which brings us to Astronomer, American Eagle, and the ever-smiling, ever-polarizing Sydney Sweeney.
Here’s the summary:
Astronomer’s CEO had a very public romantic moment with the company’s head of HR on a Coldplay concert Jumbotron. It quickly became a viral HR scandal, triggering questions about ethics and leadership. The response? A lightning-fast campaign featuring Gwyneth Paltrow that turned a personal disaster into a brand moment.
Astronomer’s original branding pivot
Meanwhile, American Eagle dropped a back-to-school campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney looking like a poster child for imagined vintage Americana; blonde hair, blue eyes, and denim wrapped around a bombshell figure. The ads triggered an immediate backlash. Critics didn’t see fashion.
How “bad jeans” became “bad genes”
They saw a political statement. Her look was called “conservative-coded,” her curves morphed into commentary, and the campaign’s cheap “bad jeans” pun got twisted into “bad genes” by people eager to assign intent. Suddenly, a simple denim ad became a referendum on identity, ideology, and the fight for control over the cultural narrative.
What Marketers Are (and Are Not) Responsible For
What do these flaps have in common? Marketers caught in the crossfire of social media outrage, expected to answer for choices they never made.
But here’s the part no one else is saying:
It’s not the marketer’s job to support any particular ideology. It’s their job to support and grow their clients’ or their employers’ brand value. That brand value is often directly tied to shareholder value. That’s their responsibility.
Companies can and should decide how they feel about political or social issues. They can and should choose whether or not to take sides, and they can and should decide what levers they’re willing to pull to get what they want.
Then it’s the marketer’s job to provide strategic guidance, explain the potential fallout, and either do the job they were hired to do or walk away if the decision violates their personal values.
Who’s Actually to Blame?
Regardless of what happens, the blame for these firestorms doesn’t lie with marketers.
It lies with us.
We’re the ones reacting to dog whistles and gossip. We’re the ones screenshotting contextless moments, forwarding them to friends, and jumping on every trend with a hot take. We act like we’re defending virtue when we’re really just addicted to outrage.
We’re not responding to what brands said. We’re responding to what we think they meant.
And somewhere in that gap between intention and interpretation, marketers are expected to make everyone happy, offend no one, and still hit this quarter’s KPIs.
Simplifying your message in a noisy world
That’s not a strategy. That’s chaos.
What Brands—and Consumers—Can Do About It
So what should companies do?
Decide who you are. Then act like it. Let your values lead your leadership, not just your language.
And what should we do?
Pause. Ask questions. And stop expecting jumbotrons and jeans ads to validate our beliefs.
The Bottom Line
Because if we don’t, we’ll keep getting the marketing we deserve.
Do you need help navigating today’s branding minefield?
I keynote at conferences around the world, helping companies lead with clarity, communicate with confidence, and build brands that matter. I still have a few dates open in 2025 and 2026.
Let’s Talk
I have a feeling the Sydney Sweeney controversy was manufactured… by American Eagle. Think about it. An ad campaign built around the similarity between the word “jeans” and “genes.” Pretty weak right? Without it being controversial does anybody think such an ad is going to sell jeans? And the ads themselves are pretty weak. Kind of boring. Then people started making a fuss. A beautiful blonde woman touting her genes in 2025 is a eugenic dog-whistle. Think about that. The first time you heard it, didn’t you think it was a ridiculous claim. Am I the only one who thought, “this is why Dems can’t beat Donald Trump,” because we tie ourselves to these ridiculous claims. And then it caught on. And then it turns out Sydney Sweeney is a Registered Republican. Because so many young actresses are these days. It’s getting all this negative buzz and nobody has pulled the ads yet. What part of this story sounds like something that would happen in the real world at random.
The whole thing is manufactured. And it’s brilliant.
Your comments make me wonder how many of the different flaps we see are manufactured as well, Seth. We know that virality can be encouraged but not guaranteed so it’s very likely that few of these strategies cross our consciousness simply because they don’t take off. But if you’re right and this entire escapade was planned, then it’s an excellent example of how these strategies can work — especially if you look at the stock and sales numbers and the amount of new sponsorships Sweeney has added to her portfolio.
Interestingly, it was your post that made me think this. And I can’t even tell you what about it made me consider the possibility. I guess from the first I heard about the outrage I’ve been bewildered with how this theory started and caught on. I’ve posted it a few places and though I expected pushback, nearly everybody has responded as you have, not not specifically buying into it, but also not coming up with any evidence that it’s not true. It would be terrific if somebody could reverse engineer it, trace back how and when the “outrage” started. Assuming that the peddlers of outrage are always looking for somehting to be outraged about, how hard would it be to plant the seed on the feed of liberal influencers and get just a few of them to take the bait?
right on the money
Great post and I would say the brand awareness that Astronomer got was priceless ( hat tip to another great ad😉)
Every sales call from them will probably now be taken as every potential customer wants to hear the inside story. And if a good sales person they should have a doozy of a story made up and ready to be told. Similar to what you do 😉🤪🤫.
Ha! They should hire you as a consultant, Hank. My guess is they haven’t thought that the sales people should do that or at least act like the cat who swallowed the canary. But it’s a great idea and would go far to keep them in the relevance zeitgeist.
Thanks for adding on to the conversation.
I enjoy this topic. Watching the political posturing around topics like this has been my guilty pleasure in this Obama/Trump era. Your comment about being addicted to rage is a constant theme of Jonathan Turley, who speaks often about this “age of rage,” sonn releasing a book titled “Rage and the Republic.”
I think the response to the American Eagle ad had to be part of the calculation, expected, embraced. They didn’t support any ideology, they used our reactive sensitivities to further their brand, a calculated risk. They got lots of free publicity – if all publicity is good publicity. They only have to be brave enough to stay consistent…
…like the company after the acquisition. We never walk through the same river twice. We need to be brave enough, aware enough to walk anyway…then get wet and get up if we fall.
I agree with you, Klee, it was a strategy. Lots of companies do things to try for viral distribution. Sometimes they score and other times people just yawn and move on. This one was a big hit. And the consequences (outside sales and stock evaluation) be damned!