EDITOR:
Chris Kamler’s recent column on American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney campaign leaned hard into snark, but in doing so it repeated one of the biggest failures of recent business reporting: presenting trailing data as proof of a current narrative.
The piece claims store traffic “plummeted” and that the Sweeney ad had “no substance.” In reality, those numbers came from Q2 results that ended in July, before the viral campaign could even register in the sales data. Within weeks, American Eagle reported a strong rebound in August and September, with the Sweeney campaign generating more than 40 billion impressions, jeans selling out, and a 25% stock surge on renewed sales guidance.
It is fair to lampoon corporate marketing or even poke fun at celebrity endorsements. What is not fair is to build opinions on a timeline that makes causality impossible. Readers deserve clarity: were sales down because of the ad, or were they down before the ad, with the campaign actually driving the recovery? The latter is what the company’s own reporting and the stock market reaction demonstrate.
The hypocrisy here is that we criticize corporations for manipulating narratives, but then tolerate the same from journalists who should know better. Journalism should challenge spin, not reinforce it for clicks or comedic effect. I expect opinion based on facts and reality.
--Andrew Champlain
Platte County
