What defines a person as cool and attractive? A&F only targets their clothing to the cool and popular teenagers in school that have great attitude and lots of friends. Apparently, Mike Jeffries’, CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, definition of cool and good-looking does not include XL or XXL sizes for women, but they do exist for men due to their potential muscular body structure. Jeffries admitted at an interview in 2006 with Salon that they are exclusionary to attractive-good-looking consumers and does not want other types of market wearing their brand.
“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” he told the site. “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”
This commercial demonstrates the kind of lifestyle that defines you as “cool and popular”, including activities such as beaches, YOLO (You Only Live Once), parties and having lots of similar types of friends.
Ultimately, as a customer of A&F, one should have this kind of lifestyle in order to wear this brand since the products are designed to fit for only this category of people as well as the activities they participate in. Indeed, A&F has a very clear targeted audience to market their brand; however, it is a very narrow audience that many consumers are turning away from their products because of their brand image. Not only are the sales of A&F declining, but they are also projecting a negative perception of their image because of the limited diversity it offers, such as clothing sizes and diversity of their models. Their marketing strategy is unethical because it is deceives and hurts the self-esteem of other adolescents who don’t necessarily identify themselves with the models that A&F portrays. It is like telling kids that they aren’t beautiful enough.
Jeffries told the Business Insider that “He doesn’t want his core customers to see people who aren’t as hot as them wearing his clothing. People who wear his clothing should feel like they’re one of the ‘cool kids.'” The idea of whose hot and whose cool is a very subjective measure that is dependent of beholder, not Jeffries. It is unfair for A&F to classify individuals, then further exclude the types of people who should be allowed to wear the brand.