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American Eagle vs Gap
New brand data reveals the real business impact of their vastly different campaigns.
Isaac Peiris
September 02, 2025
Hey, I’m Isaac 👋 I founded Pistachio, where we’ve worked with brands like BuzzFeed and Clay to understand their audience, build trust and deliver measurable outcomes through content-led growth.
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American Eagle vs Gap
In clothing, one metric drives buyer consideration 5.3x more than any other factor.
Whether customers feel the brand "is for people like me".
Two denim campaigns launched within weeks of each other last month. GAP absolutely nailed this metric with their "Better in Denim" campaign. American Eagle spectacularly failed it with their "Great Genes/Jeans" effort.
The visual contrast said everything. Six diverse women from KATSEYE moving in perfect sync to "Milkshake" versus Sydney Sweeney posed for the male gaze, talking about her genetic traits. One felt like authentic cultural celebration. The other felt like a throwback to early 2000s advertising.
New research from Tracksuit reveals exactly why one campaign built brand preference while the other destroyed it. In a category with 94% market penetration, emotional alignment isn't nice-to-have. It's survival. |  American Eagle lags behind in the metric that drives most conversion for the clothing category. |
The question every marketer should ask is, does your campaign make your audience feel seen, or sold to?
Who Actually Buys Clothing
Before we dive into why these campaigns succeeded or failed, it’s important to understand who's actually buying in this category.
Clothing isn't niche. 94% of adults in the US fall into the clothing category, making it one of the most penetrated markets in existence. When everyone's already buying, growth doesn't come from expanding the market. It comes from stealing market share.
The Tracksuit category data reveals that clothing buyers aren't just purchasing products, they're purchasing identity signals. The demographic spread is broad, but the psychological drivers are remarkably consistent across segments. People buy clothes that confirm their current identity, not aspirational versions of who they might become.
This is where the "is for people like me" metric becomes crucial. In a saturated market where product quality is relatively comparable, emotional alignment becomes the primary differentiator. Brands win by reflecting their audience's reality back to them.
That 5.3x conversion multiplier is proof that in the clothing category, emotional alignment wins over all else.
GAP's Audience Alignment
GAP over-indexes on 35-54 year-olds and caucasians, with a fairly even gender split. Their KATSEYE campaign suggests they're hunting for younger, more diverse audiences, seeking demographics beyond their traditional base. |  Demographic focus for GAP, fairly consistent but slightly over-indexed on 35-54. |
The strategy makes sense. By authentically representing Gen Z diversity, they're expanding their appeal while staying true to inclusive values that resonate across age groups. They know their audience, scoring 28% on "is for people like me". Their audience knows them too, associating them with “youthful”, “casual”, “trendy” and “stylish”.
In this latest campaign, every element worked in harmony to answer one question clearly: this brand celebrates who you actually are.
Dance classes around the world started teaching the choreography. Social media exploded with organic participation. The campaign became culture, not just advertising.
American Eagle's Audience Alienation
American Eagle made the opposite choice at every turn. They over-index on females aged 25-44 and caucasians. Their core customers are young women seeking authentic representation and cultural connection. |  American Eagle focus slightly younger than GAP on the 25-44 demographic. |
The Sydney Sweeney campaign suggests they were trying to double down on their existing audience, but ultimately missed the mark by prioritising male fantasy over female empowerment. They alienated their core demographic while failing to meaningfully expand into new ones.
The disconnect becomes obvious when you look at the data. American Eagle's audience is predominantly female, yet their campaign was designed around male-gaze aesthetics and messaging that felt exclusionary rather than celebratory.
What makes it even more devastating is this wasn't just any brand making a tone-deaf choice. This was a company abandoning the progressive identity they'd spent over a decade building.
Since 2014, American Eagle has been the poster child for inclusive fashion through their #AerieREAL campaign, pioneering unretouched photos, celebrating diverse body types and featuring models with disabilities. They were literally the first major retailer to stop airbrushing models, launching their body-positive approach years before it became trendy.
 Halima Aden wearing a denim hijab in a 2017 American Eagle campaign | Their sub-brand Aerie reached $1 billion in sales by championing authenticity. They featured Somali refugee Halima Aden in hijab campaigns. They pledged $500,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. They built their entire brand around making young women feel seen and valued for who they actually are. Just months before the Sydney Sweeney campaign, they launched "Live Your Life", a brand platform specifically focused on "self-expression, inclusion and acceptance" for Gen Z. |
Their audience didn't just reject the campaign, they felt personally betrayed by a brand they'd trusted to represent their values. American Eagle scored 24% on "is for people like me", signalling a failure to deliver on their primary conversion driver. A 4-point difference might not seem like much, but in a category as commoditised as clothing even that small difference can have a huge impact, especially when it comes to the primary conversion driver.
Why It Matters
Before diving into our data, it's worth acknowledging the noise around this topic. Other research claimed American Eagle's campaign was successful, but as Andrew Tindall pointed out, those studies only surveyed people who could recall the ad, a methodological flaw that inflates positive sentiment.
"If you only talk to people who already remember the campaign, you're talking to a pool heavily skewed towards existing brand buyers," Tindall explained. Meanwhile, foot traffic data showed American Eagle stores were actually down 4% despite the share price surging by up to 18%.
This is why the Tracksuit research matters. It measures broader brand perception across the category, not just among ad recallers. The insights reveal what actually drives behaviour, not what people think drives their behaviour.
The Conversion Cascade Effect
Here's where the Tracksuit data tells the real story of what happens when you nail or fail that crucial "is for people like me" metric.
GAP's 4-point advantage (28% vs 24%) triggered a cascade effect across every other measurement that matters. Their brand preference increased 4 percentage points while American Eagle's dropped 5 points. That's a 9-point swing in opposite directions. |  4-point difference on the most important metric for the category |
The trust scores reveal the deeper damage. GAP earned 39% on "is a brand I trust" compared to American Eagle's 33%. When you betray a decade of inclusive brand building overnight, trust doesn't just stagnate. It actively erodes.
These numbers prove something fundamental about modern marketing that Tindall's analysis reinforces. As he noted, "emotion drives behaviour" far more than rational evaluation. The "is for people like me" metric captures that emotional, gut reaction that actually influences purchasing decisions in this category.
In saturated categories like clothing, the brands that win aren't those with the biggest budgets or the most famous celebrities. They're the brands that most authentically reflect their audience's identity back to them.
Business Translation
The market response revealed everything about which approach actually works.
GAP's campaign became participatory culture. People learned the choreography voluntarily. Dance studios created classes around it. The brand became part of conversations people wanted to have. That's what happens when you achieve authentic alignment, engagement becomes advocacy. American Eagle's campaign became something people wanted to escape from. They had to remove content, issue defensive statements and watch their intended message get hijacked by unintended controversy. They spent their marketing budget creating problems they then had to solve. One campaign people wanted to join. The other sparked political debates. |
The business impact was immediate and measurable. GAP built sustainable competitive advantage through authentic cultural connection. American Eagle burned brand equity chasing viral moments that alienated their core audience.
Windows vs Mirrors
This isn't just about clothing. The "is for people like me" principle explains why challenger brands consistently outperform incumbents who lose touch with their audiences.
Look at how tbh skincare reflects young women's authentic experiences rather than selling transformation promises. Or how Lululemon confirms wellness identity rather than selling fitness aspirations.
In saturated markets, mirror brands consistently outperform window brands because they eliminate cognitive dissonance. When a brand confirms your existing identity rather than challenging you to change it, there's no psychological barrier to overcome.
The brands winning across these highly competitive categories understand that belonging beats buzz every time. When products become commoditised in an attention-scarce world, emotional alignment becomes the only sustainable differentiator.
The Cultural Fluency Test
Before launching any campaign, apply this simple framework. Does every element clearly answer "who is this for?" in a way that would score high on "is for people like me"?
GAP's systematic alignment:
| American Eagle's systematic misalignment:
|
Why Authenticity Creates Competitive Advantage
Cultural fluency isn't just good ethics, it's strategic business advantage that compounds over time. GAP's success built on consistent DNA (no genetics pun intended…) they'd been developing through previous collaborations with Troye Sivan, Tyla and Parker Posey. Each campaign reinforced their inclusive, music-driven identity. |  Troye Sivan can do no wrong! |
American Eagle broke their own pattern. Instead of building on the progressive brand equity they'd earned through #AerieREAL, they confused their audience with messaging that felt foreign to everything they'd established.
The strategic insight is authentic cultural positioning creates competitive moats that rivals can't replicate. Anyone can hire a celebrity. Not everyone can build genuine cultural understanding over years of consistent audience connection.
When you nail the "is for people like me" metric, trust follows naturally. When you violate it, especially after building it, the damage compounds in the opposite direction.
Don’t Guess
Making a big bet through a campaign like this doesn’t have to be a guessing game. Audience and category insights now allow you to take calculated risks that pay off. Those insights show that, in clothing, "is for people like me" drives conversion 5.3x more than any other factor.
GAP understood the assignment. They made every campaign element reflect their audience's reality. American Eagle abandoned a decade of authentic relationship-building for viral attention that backfired spectacularly.
The Cultural Fluency Test is simple: Does your campaign make your audience feel seen or sold to? Does it confirm their identity or contradict it?
The data proves that culture tapped beats culture copied. Authentic representation outperforms aspirational fantasy. Belonging wins over buzz.
In the battle for preference, there's no gap between authenticity and effectiveness.
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