The Denim Wars, 1 year later

Hey, I’m Isaac 👋 I founded Pistachio, a content studio working with B2B brands like Atono and Clay to build trust, relationships and loyalty with their current and future customers.

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It’s been 12 months since American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney campaign got everyone talking. Along with the follow up Travis Kelce campaign they hit 44 billion impressions. Gap ran Better in Denim, with KATSEYE dancing to Milkshake, and got 8 billion.

A year on and the business results have landed. Gap grew same-store sales between 7% and 10% every quarter. American Eagle managed 1% to 2%, and then went backwards.

Let’s look at the real impact of these viral campaigns.

Tracksuit is a continuous brand tracking platform, they survey a fresh sample of category buyers every month and ask the same questions about every brand. That gives you a running read on how many people know you, how many would consider you, how many prefer you, and what they associate you with.

On the headline numbers, the celebrity approach landed. Between January and June this year, American Eagle held the preference of 10% of the market against Gap’s 7%, and it did that with lower overall awareness in the first place. Of the people who would consider American Eagle, roughly ten points more went on to prefer it than did for Gap.

Perception moved too. Over the twelve months after the campaigns, among people who'd already consider buying American Eagle, they lifted five of the statements Tracksuit monitors by three to five points each. Things like whether a brand feels “premium” and whether it feels like it “stands for something”. Gap only moved one.

So, on the brand scoreboard, American Eagle won.

But then we take a closer look. That movement is among considerers, not the whole market, so American Eagle got better at convincing the convinced. Then, the most important statement in the category is whether customers feel a brand “is for people like me”. That statement impacts purchase behaviour 5.3x more than any other among clothing brands. Before these campaigns, Gap held 28% against American Eagle’s 24%. A year later, Gap remains at 28% while American Eagle have nudged up to 25%.

So Gap are still ahead on the metrics that matters. Or are they? When you filter down to focus only on the 18-34 year old demographic, the target demographic of both campaigns, we get a different picture. American Eagle sit ahead of Gap at 33% compared to 31%.

So Gap still held the most important category metric overall, but American Eagle did successfully move the needle among their intended target demographic.

I’m sure most of you are in the same boat as me, as much as I’d love to talk about brand metrics all day, inevitably someone asks the question about financials. So let’s talk about it.

Gap stores did $796 million in net sales last quarter, with same-store sales up 10%. They called it one of the brand’s strongest quarters in over two decades and put denim at the top of the list of things driving it.

American Eagle stores did $678.5 million over the same period, down 2%, against an expected rise of 3%. That’s a five point miss, and American Eagle blamed softer denim sales and a colder spring hurting seasonal lines. The weather might be a fair point, until you notice Gap grew 10% in the same weather.

American Eagle Outfitters, the parent company of American Eagle, owns another brand called Aerie.

While American Eagle sales went backwards, Aerie grew up to 25% a quarter, every quarter. Its clothing sales were up 45% last quarter and the brand passed $2 billion in annual revenue. The parent company posted a record $1.2 billion quarter, and almost none of that growth came from the brand that ran the big celebrity campaigns.

Interestingly, Aerie has been running the same brand platform for 12+ years. They focus on unretouched photos and casting of diverse bodies and models with disabilities. That platform does one very important thing. It puts Aerie’s actual customer on screen. American Eagle spent 2025 putting people its customers are supposed to want to be there instead. 

12 years of one idea against 12 months of another. One of them grew and the other went backwards.

Gap spent years making denim the thing it is known for, right down to the ‘90s nostalgia running through this year’s Hailey Bieber range. Aerie spent twelve years on body confidence. American Eagle spent twelve months on celebrity.

Two of those three are things the customer already believed in before a campaign ran. Celebrity is the only one that had to be bought.

Gap’s turnaround also started long before Better in Denim went out. They’ve had nine straight quarters of same-store growth, so the winning streak was already a year and a half old when KATSEYE showed up. The campaign continued to build on a belief Gap had spent years establishing. American Eagle built its associations inside the twelve months it was advertising. Gap and Aerie walked in with theirs.

You can only win a cultural moment your brand already stands for. A campaign can decide how many people are reminded of that belief at once, and continues to plant your flag in that space, but that’s about it. It’s the same reason a brand that reflects the identity somebody already has wins over one asking them to become somebody new.

A single study run straight after a campaign gives you a lift number, and American Eagle’s would have been genuinely good.

What that number can’t do is tell you how that lift turns into a sale. That requires a benchmark and continuous tracking, the same questions asked of every brand in the category quarter after quarter. Only from that could we see “premium” and “on-the-way-up” statements drift around while “is for people like me” moved with the sales.

I want to clarify, I don’t think any of this makes the Sweeney campaign a failure. It was objectively a success, moving customer perception in their target demographics and propelling American Eagle back into the conversation. A lot more than most campaigns manage.

But they also lost ground to a competitor working with less than a fifth of the impressions, while their own sister brand grew on an idea it has maintained for over twelve years.

Attention is just that, it amplifies whatever belief is already established. So before you spend, check what your customers already believe about the brand you’re putting spend behind. American Eagle found out the expensive way that the stronger outcomes might come from a completely different place.

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