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American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) unwittingly tapped a raw undercurrent permeating across wide swathes of the US with its "great jeans/genes" ad campaign featuring the heart-throbe Sydney Sweeney, inviting an unprecedented level of interest and controversy. Yet, that bump in visibility is now proving to be ephemeral, as per one critical metric.

For some, the ad campaign marked a return to sexualized marketing and glamor, bereft of the body positivity narrative that has dominated the marketing landscape in recent years. For others, the campaign's emphasis on genetics marked a troubling regression, invoking subliminal messaging around eugenics.

Nonetheless, in a nod to the iconic words that any attention is good attention, American Eagle Outfitters stock surged in the aftermath of the Sydney Sweeney campaign, managing to erase some of its tariff-driven steep losses so far this year.

Yet, as stated earlier, that remarkable bump in visibility is now fast disappearing, as per the Google Search trend data for the past 90 days.

This development is entirely in line with a recent assessment by the Bank of America, whose analysts do not assign "a high likelihood that momentum from this campaign can fully inflect the business over the long run."

Interestingly, American Eagle Outfitters has doubled down on its Sydney Sweeney-style buzz-creating modus operandi by leveraging the recently announced engagement between the pop icon Taylor Swift and the NFL star Travis Kelce to launch its AE x Tru Kolors by Travis Kelce collection. Yet, this announcement has produced no noticable bump in search trends.

Meanwhile, American Eagle Outfitters is gearing up to announce its latest quarterly earnings on the 03rd of September. As such, the narrative around the stock is expected to center around American import tariffs and the ensuing margin erosion for AEO, with the management having already affirmed a reduction in 2025 gross margin by $40 million or around 150 basis points, and that's after undertaking a number of impact mitigation steps.