STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The clothing company American Eagle has an advertising tagline - Sydney Sweeney has great jeans. The movie star appears wearing jeans. And of course, people are invited into the wordplay about the genes, the genetics of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman that viewers can't seem to look away from. So what does this say about the spokespeople we see all the time in ads? Allen Adamson is co-founder of the brand marketing consulting firm Metaforce, and he's on the line. Good morning.
ALLEN ADAMSON: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: What did you think about when you saw that ad with that particular tagline?
ADAMSON: It was a company figuring out how to break through in a world where everyone is screaming and say, look at me, look at me. And breaking through and being remembered is almost impossible.
INSKEEP: Well, part of it is, of course, getting this particularly arresting person who's, you know, very much part of the zeitgeist, part of the culture right now. But the other is that play on the word jeans. Why do that?
ADAMSON: Because people remember disruption. People remember the edge, people trying things new, pushing buttons. And this is really important for products that are commodities. Jeans are commodities. You know, they're - you can get them for $20 at Costco and the Gap, and they're selling them for a lot more than that.
INSKEEP: Yeah. Well, I'm thinking about the commentary on this. There was some social media commentary. Oh, there's something racist about this. And I get that. I understand people raising that. But I think there's also something real here - isn't it? - in that advertisers do think about the race and ethnicity, the look of the people they choose to pitch their products to us.
ADAMSON: You know, for years, the tide was flowing in a different direction. There was a pressure on advertisers to diversify, to show people in ads that usually were not shown in ads because that was unusual. All the ads had a sort of "Leave It To Beaver" old-fashioned look. They all cast the same central casting people and category by category, but particularly fashion where you need to get attention because a product itself is not different and unique in such a - you know, it's not like an iPhone, saying, oh, my God, I got to have one.
INSKEEP: Are you implying that American Eagle jeans are not the most unique jeans in the history of jeans, sir?
ADAMSON: Well, you know, they may be for the people buying them because the people buying them view them as badge brands 'cause putting them on says to their friends they are cool; they're hip. And it defines them. So young people, old people wear it because what it says about them, not because it - the stitching is better or it makes them look 10% or 20% better.
INSKEEP: So if people were going for diversity in past years, are advertisers going for some other look now that the politics of the country are a little different?
ADAMSON: Undoubtedly because, as I said, advertising needs to disrupt the norm. And if the norm is - has been casting diverse people in ads, casting different people is going to get attention, and advertisers need to get noticed. If they're not noticed and they don't create buzz, especially for a fashion brand, it's game over.
INSKEEP: And the way to get noticed now would be to go for that blonde-haired, blue-eyed person who was the standard in the past and then went away for a while.
ADAMSON: And give her a script that used a clever play on words and find somebody red-hot, like Sweeney.
INSKEEP: Allen Adamson, you may have hit the key there at the very end (laughter). He's with Metaforce. Thanks so much.
ADAMSON: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF POPULAR TRIBUTES' "BLUE JEANS (INSTRUMENTAL)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
