Anonymous #1 7w

Why am I being downvoted for liking her boobs?

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Anonymous #1 7w

LMFAO

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Anonymous #3 7w

3 why did you say it was problematic

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Anonymous #1 7w

a white blonde with blue eyes saying “i have great ‘jeans’, my ‘jeans’ are blue” can be interpreted as a double entendre, implying that she has superior genes. it problematic bc blonde hair and blue eyes have been the beauty standard in America, and that commercial is further promoting that ideal

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Anonymous #3 7w

Shut up. Just shut up. Nobody cares.

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Anonymous #2 7w

i already said i don’t care. if u don’t care so much why are you so heated

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Anonymous #3 7w

Sure it COULD be interpreted that way, but she was clearly taking about her ass? It’s not cool to just knowingly twist people words

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Anonymous #2 7w

I care. I asked

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Anonymous #1 7w

i didn’t twist anyone’s words. what she said before that, talking about traits are passed down to offspring, personality, etc, is her clearly talking about genes. idk where you got she’s talking about her ass bc i mean tbh she don’t have a great one? she has great boobs not a great ass

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Anonymous #3 7w

When did she talk about traits passed down to offspring? What did she say “before”

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Anonymous #1 7w

did you watch the commercial? it’s the first thing she said in the commercial

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Anonymous #3 7w

Apparently we are watching different ads 🤨

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Anonymous #1 7w

well in the commercial the first thing she says is “genes are passed down from parents to offspring… etc etc”. i mean again i don’t really care but it was clear the ad was playing a double entendre on genes and jeans

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Anonymous #3 7w

I can’t find that video at all. All I see is the 30 second one

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Anonymous #1 7w

https://youtu.be/ACbGOyMbziA?si=4VOX-wbNvXwAayu9 watch the first part of this vid

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Anonymous #3 7w

I can’t click links :/

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Anonymous #3 7w

i’ll dm it to you

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Anonymous #3 7w

Thx

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Anonymous #1 7w

ok well it’s not letting me dm you lol but it u type “sydney sweeney american eagle” in youtube it should be the first one that comes up

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Anonymous #3 7w

I found it. It was hidden beneath all the news clips and commentators for me

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Anonymous #3 7w

Still not sure she’s a flaming racist trying to send a message to all of her white supremacist followers 🤨

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Anonymous #1 7w

well i didn’t say that part lmao

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Anonymous #3 7w

What do you find problematic about it? To me it seems pretty binary. Either there was racist intention behind the genes thing - which would be INCREDIBLY racist - or there wasn’t, in which case it’s not problematic at all it’s was just bad marketing

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Anonymous #1 7w

it’s just sort of like a dog whistle. with all the politics and propaganda happening in the us rn, to have an ad of a white woman with blue eyes speaking about genes and how she has a great one, it can be seen as harmful. and the thing with marketing, is that everything has intent. so now saying she’s a flaming racist but, the intent behind the ad exuded harmful ideas

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Anonymous #3 7w

Nah see that’s where I disagree. Marketing teams aren’t secretly trying to push political agendas (usually). Believe or not, highly paid people just fuck up sometimes. Remember the Pepsi ad that everyone hated? It was just a bunch of tone def suits. And besides, if American Eagle was trying to dog whistle, it didn’t work since everyone heard it. I don’t think dog whistling is a thing that companies actually do

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Anonymous #1 7w

the fact that “everyone heard it” kinda proves the point. it’s gotten a lot of controversy which they knew would happen. ur going to have ppl hate it and you’re going to have the “white supremacists” that love it and want to now be a shopper. and that’s where i’d have to disagree with you as well, because i do believe that the ppl behind the pepsi ad knew what they were doing. i mean, funny timing to have police officers in your ad in the midst of police brutality at an all time high

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Anonymous #3 7w

But police brutality was nowhere near an all time high and both of their sales dropped drastically, meaning that they did the opposite of their job. Marketing teams aren’t there to create awareness, they are there to create sales

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Anonymous #1 7w

but even if the sales dropped, it doesn’t mean that the message and intent was lost. shock value and controversy are often contributors to marketing strategies. and you’re right, it wasn’t at an all time high, but it was a highly talked about issue at that time, which is why the ad was seen as problematic

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Anonymous #3 7w

The marketing was definitely in no way worth the loss is sales and reputation. They still haven’t recovered. Large companies don’t need brand awareness they need brand appeal

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Anonymous #1 7w

i get what you’re saying, but i’d argue that brand awareness and brand appeal go hand in hand. controversial marketing doesn’t always aim for instant sales, it’s about staying relevant and keeping the brand in conversation. this is proven by how we’re still talking about the pepsi ad when it was yearsss ago.

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Anonymous #4 7w

No it didn’t. Sales are down. High level employees are going to lose their jobs. You guys don’t understand how businesses work lmao

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Anonymous #3 7w

Why would they care that we are talking about it if they are selling less?

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Anonymous #3 7w

Everyone already knew what Pepsi was. This might be a strategy for smaller firms, but not the world’s second - now third - largest soda conglomerate

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Anonymous #1 7w

and ads have always pushed political ideals since the beginning of time. american eagle has been the first as of recently that’s gotten this much traction by showcasing how their not apart of the leftists ideals. take Hollister, one of their competitors, they have been promoting body inclusivity, LGTBQ+ representations, etc. now you have american eagle with a skinny white woman with blonde hair and blue eyes talking about genotypes

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Anonymous #3 7w

american eagle presented a space that “white supremacists” are welcomed

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Anonymous #3 7w

Think about it like this: most of a large companies stock is owned by shareholders, not the companies actual management. If the management does something that scares and shocks everyone, the companies stock decreases, meaning that shareholders lose money. When shareholder lose money, they fire management. So why would anyone want any of this to happen?

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Anonymous #3 7w

Yeah because lgtbq when done right boosts brand equity more than it hurts it. It doesn’t matter how you frame it this is simple a bad marketing strategy for a large firm

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Anonymous #3 7w

But if you can show me proof of the white supremacists thing, I’ll concede that this was done on purpose

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Anonymous #1 7w

it’s a necessary loss. to prove to the white supremacists and the racists that there is a space open for them. i guess you could say that this is a “conspiracy theory”, but i do believe that these marketing campaigns are all very strategic. and have there been proof of American Eagle sales decreasing due to this ad? i mean i haven’t seen anyone talk about american eagle until the ad, so it seems like whatever they’re doing is working

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Anonymous #3 7w

There stock went from 12 to 10. That means for every 12 dollars the company was worth, they just lost two. If you invested 100M in the company, you just lost 17M. Someone is getting fired

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Anonymous #1 7w

ah okay i see. i’m actually shocked tbh. well in that case, do you still think the ad wasn’t problematic? initially you said that you didn’t see anything wrong with it, but if they’re actually decreasing in sales from the majority, then maybe they’re seeing something that you aren’t

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Anonymous #3 7w

Look at the bigger picture

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Anonymous #3 7w

I meant morally problematic. But I’ll take it back if you show me proof that they said they were a safe space for white supremacists or whatever

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Anonymous #4 7w

The ad didn’t come out a month ago that’s unrelated

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Anonymous #1 7w

i can’t give you tangible proof because ofc american eagle didn’t just come out and explicitly say that. but that’s how dog whistles work. it’s about imagery and wording. whether they meant it or not, their imagery usage is linked to white supremacy, and it doesn’t help that within the ad, they’re talking about literal genotypes. that’s what makes it morally problematic

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Anonymous #3 7w

if i’m being honesty, i think the ad was clever. the double entendre of gene and jean was cool. but i also can acknowledge the subtle cues of it all

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Anonymous #3 7w

Look I’m not saying that they shouldn’t accept that they upset people, I’m just saying that as long as they didn’t mean to dog whistle, they didn’t do anything morally wrong. They just did something stupid, and we’re all guilty of that. And if it is a dog whistle, then yeah that’s insanely racist

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Anonymous #1 7w

if you don’t mind me asking, what’s your race?

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Anonymous #1 7w

I really just think a lot of America is tired of being PC and people pleasing. There is nothing inherently wrong with saying someone has great genes (big boobs, blue eyes, etc)

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Anonymous #3 7w

Uh oh I’m in trouble

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Anonymous #1 7w

LMFAO so i’m assuming you’re white then?

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Anonymous #3 7w

Yeah lol

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Anonymous #1 7w

okay. and thank u for the honesty because you could’ve easily said that you were any other race. but, i’m not trying to discredit you or dismiss you, but i will say that it’s easy for white people to easily look pass things or not think twice about things because it’s a representation of you. a person of color who have went through racism can pick up these subtle cues more quickly than a white person because we were trained to do so in our everyday life

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Anonymous #3 7w

but again, i’m not discrediting you, i just do feel that sometimes there is a disconnect

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Anonymous #3 7w

I understand that I have a different perspective on things and can be miss out on things sometimes because of my skin color, and it’s okay that you pointed that out. However - and I’m also not trying to offend here - I think you might be a bit more prone to racial conformation bias, especially when it comes to large companies. As someone who’s grown up around business, it’s definitely not impossible for a company or especially a public figure to dog whistle, but from a financial standpoint

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Anonymous #3 7w

A publicly traded company would pretty much never benefit from dog whistling

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Anonymous #1 7w

i won’t deny that. i could very well be more prone to racial confirmation bias without even realizing it. and i’m not that knowledgeable of the business aspect of things, so it is also ignorant of me with what i’m saying in some aspects. however, i don’t feel as if they thought they were going to benefit. do you not think that a major company like American Eagle didn’t think that ad was going to be controversial? or that they were going to lose sales?

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Anonymous #1 7w

that’s why i think this is all the case of dog whistling. like yeah, sure, they’re going to lose sales, but it won’t nearly be to a point where they’d run out of business. they are still going to be afloat. but, what they did accomplish, was showing the white supremacists that they have a space for them. so yeah, losing sales, losing money, okay. 3 years from now, who’s gonna care? this didn’t do a huge dent.

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Anonymous #3 7w

Yeah I honestly do think that the company could have been oblivious. Media will have you believing that the ceo and upper management of a company is very hands on and actually looks at what their marketing team is doing, but the fact is that upper management only makes broader decisions like hiring and promoting marketing talent, and signing brand deals. They definitely knew that Sydney Sweeney was working with them, but I doubt the ceo even saw the commercial before it came out. They generally

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Anonymous #3 7w

Don’t handle smaller things like that

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Anonymous #3 7w

I don’t think that c suite workers care about a message or the impact they leave on the world. Generally the worst thing about rich people isn’t racism, it’s disinterest. I don’t think they would sacrifice profits to send a message

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Anonymous #1 7w

i still don’t buy that they were completely unaware. these types of campaigns go through multiple levels of approval, especially considering that it involves someone high profile like Sydney Sweeney. it’s extremely hard to believe that no one saw how it could be interpreted, and IF that was the case, that’s a problem in itself

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Anonymous #1 7w

and the message holds more value than profit. American Eagle is a billion dollar company. what does it do to them to lose some profit from an ad that they knew would be controversial? that’s the point of dog whistling. they’ve reached the audience they wanted to reach. losing profit in the process isn’t a hit on them.

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Anonymous #3 7w

it was just part of the process

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Anonymous #3 7w

It’s definitely a problem lol look how often marketing ads miss. High level management is good at corporate leadership not marketing, so they tend to let the marketers do their thing. The ceo of ford wouldn’t tell one of their engineers how to build a commercial viable suspension system, they just give them a budget and a timeline. Same goes for any other department, including marketing

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Anonymous #3 7w

A lot of CEOs know they are out of touch, so they just trust the people they hire. Maybe that’s not the case here, I’m just saying it probably is. CEO handles the contract work of getting Sydney Sweeney on board, marketing creates the tagline

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Anonymous #3 7w

They don’t measure their value in nominal dollars they measure their value in market share. When they lose money they lose market share, which means they lose their ability to operate going forward. I know business might seem boring to an outsider, but to a rich man who’s been going to dinner parties and fundraisers his whole life its incredibly high risk high reward. They tend to become addicted to earning and increasing

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Anonymous #1 7w

all of that still doesn’t mean that they were completely oblivious to the tone or message. everything goes through review. these decisions are strategic. and i’m not saying some companies can’t drop the ball, but it’s not as common as we think. even if the ceo wasn’t 100% hands on, there’s still a line of order. this isn’t some small business, American Eagle is a polished, well-established billion dollar company

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Anonymous #1 7w

and exactly. this is why dog whistles are calculated. they’re not trying to rank anything, they’re trying to maintain it or possibly grow by subtly signaling to a specific audience. they’re not risking anything. they’re literally just spreading their message to their intended audience. that’s the whole strategy.

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Anonymous #3 7w

risk*

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Anonymous #3 7w

Why would shareholders hire a ceo that prioritizes racist god whistling over profits? Keep in mind there are dozens of major shareholders and hundreds to thousand of minors ones, as well of millions of Americans with technical voting rights. There’s definitely no unified secret mission with that many people behind the company. Unless they just happened to accidentally hire a secret racist this just isn’t very likely

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Anonymous #1 7w

i think this is where we inherently disagree at. to say “why would they hire a ceo that is a racist god” when the whole infrastructure is racist. racism is bigger than you think, and this isn’t me playing the victim card because i am a minority. i mean, for example, Abercrombie made it pretty clear that black people in specific weren’t their target audience. it’s not uncommon for these major companies to have racist ideals

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Anonymous #3 7w

I meant to say racist dog whistler that was autocorrect

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Anonymous #3 7w

Maybe that’s how it is but i personally think that most big companies are completely soulless and the management is only driven by profits, not ideals

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Anonymous #1 7w

i do also believe that most bigger companies are soulless and driven by profits, the same way i believe those same companies could also be racist. but, with either of those options, it’s still problematic

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Anonymous #1 7w

and i just want to say that this is literally the first conversation that i’ve had on yikyak that went on for this long without it leading into insults and them being condescending. this was literally the most productive conversation i’ve ever had on this app, and i’ve been on this app for years lol

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Anonymous #3 7w

Being soulless and profit driven is a problem, but for different reasons

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Anonymous #3 7w

Yeah same. We did good lol 👍

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Anonymous #1 7w

we did! i really enjoyed talking to you. thank you for giving me your insight

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Anonymous #5 6w

They didn't say that, they said she has good jeans. American Eagle sells clothes. American Eagle sells jeans. They're claiming their product is good and they're also saying "btw we paid a celebrity to be here"

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