Unwrapping Sydney Sweeney's Holiday Strategy

'The ad wasn't for me, but she understood the assignment'

After American Eagle’s “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” campaign, critics cried foul. Some argued the wordplay on “genes” evoked eugenics and carried racial undertones. Sweeney followed it with an ad for the sports betting app Novig, in which she was barely clothed (if at all), and Olympians and other athletes accused it of sexualizing women in sports. I heard the uproar the way you hear a neighbor’s leaf blower. Loud and annoying to some people, perhaps, but not really my problem.

Then came the lingerie commercials for Syrn. It opens with Ms. Sweeney on the couch with a gigantic sundae (an obvious nod to Kevin McCallister living large at the Plaza in Home Alone 2). Another scene appears to have been inspired by another children’s holiday character (this time, Cindy Lou Who), and the whole thing pretty much heads where you’d expect a lingerie ad to go.

@syrn

the holidays came early this year ❤️🎁 the SYRN holiday shop officially opens on 10.27

♬ original sound – SYRN by Sydney Sweeney

I get the wince. These are kids’ movies, and I’d probably have picked a different resident of Whoville. But there’s an adult in a costume, nobody on screen is a child, and—after googling the brand—a lot of people are asking a lace pajama set to carry the weight of their entire childhood. Selling stuff with sex is older than the wheel. And if she were hawking Polygrip, I’d be confused. In this campaign, lingerie is just casting.

So back to the assignment… here’s the thing people miss. Ms. Sweeney never set out to make everyone like her so much as make everyone talk about her. And on that metric, she’s showing her work.

After the Novig ad, searches for her briefly overtook “Donald Trump” and “Iran war.” A woman and a football out-trended the news cycle. I don’t know what that says about us as a culture but it says something about her ability to get people talking. And while she reportedly lost some Instagram followers initially, that count seems to have rebounded.

So why does Sweeney shrug it all off? Novig describes her as “a strategic partner and equity holder,” and Syrn is actually her own brand. Whereas a hired model collects a check and goes home, an owner has the whole bill and owns the upside. You can call that reckless or call it math, but it’s not the move of someone who stumbled into a controversy. (It’s worth noting that Nike makes shoes in Vietnam under conditions people have criticized for years, and I haven’t noticed the lines getting shorter.)

The Fine Print

I should confess that before all these ads I was aware of Sydney Sweeney, but I had no idea what she was lending her star power to. Now I (and everyone reading this) know of a brand of jeans, a sports betting app, and a lingerie company I otherwise might not have. Somebody in marketing is getting a bonus.

Whether any of it translates into sales is a different story, and the “it’s obviously working” crowd may have to eat a little sundae (some reporting suggests American Eagle’s early boost faded but they did contract her for another campaign).

I think we can all agree that attention is a sugar rush. It’s absolutely wonderful …until about 4 p.m., when you’re lying on the couch wondering why you ate the whole thing. But that’s the brands’ homework, not hers. She understood the assignment: show up, get everyone talking, (and in her case, own a piece of the action).

Whether companies can turn a conversation into a customer is for them to figure out but Sydney Sweeney has already collected.

Related: Sydney Sweeney Returns for American Eagle