This blog post is part of an assignment for COMM 465: Marketing Management, with Phaedra Burke. 

So Aerie, the intimates brand under the American Eagle clothing brand recently launched a new marketing campaign in which they’ve stopped using supermodels and no longer retouch their ads.

Screen capture from the aerie home page.

And here is the video that the image mentions, a clip from Good Morning America regarding Aerie’s latest campaign:

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I think Aerie has been very successful with this campaign because through careful analyses of consumers and the current social and cultural environment, they’ve managed to capture the attention of their marketplace, all of whom are what Aerie style and fit expert Jenny Altman describes as a “great demographic [who] don’t get to see what girls their age really look like”, some of whom are hungry for models who they can relate to, some of whom are socially conscious feminists, some of whom are highly critical college students etc. Ads that that addess the current social awareness of photoshopped-to-heck advertisements (such as Dove’s Real Beauty Sketches) generate a lot of conversation nowadays, and Aerie was able to re-create this with their new campaign by emphasizing the fact that their models are not supermodels, and therefore relatively more representative of the average consumer, and are also not photoshopped. As soon as something like this is put out, people are quick to praise and criticise the company’s move. Critics note how the ladies are still models nonetheless, still beautiful, fit, and mostly white. People who praise the company say how no matter what, this is a great step in the right direction. Either way, people are talking and that brings attention to the company. I know for a fact the campaign got me to check out their site, so, there’s that. Furthermore, aerie seems to be communicating to consumers that the value they can provide is self-confidence and staff/a company that can relate to them. By using the tag line “The real you is sexy”, they are giving the consumers the idea that the company thinks the consumers are sexy as they are, and who doesn’t want to hear that?I don’t want to go over to La Senza, who sells this fake sexy that there’s no way I can be… but hey look, Aerie likes me for me, I like them.