American Eagle is taking a web page from its previous for the launch of a brand new model platform, giving recent power to a 20-year-old “Stay Your Life” slogan to advertise self-expression, inclusion and acceptance. The platform, which debuts Thursday (July 25), coincides with the rollout of the model’s back-to-school marketing campaign.
“Stay Your Life” — a phrase trademarked by American Eagle for over a decade — has lengthy been part of the retailer’s advertising and marketing, first formally showing for the 2012 back-to-school season. In the present day, the slogan is being modernized for Gen Z and can be ingrained in a fall marketing campaign that features a partnership with 2023 U.S. Open champion Coco Gauff. Faculty soccer appearances, 3D billboards and a collaboration with Life on Movie to seize disposable digicam footage spherical out the hassle.
“Our intent is that ‘Stay Your Life’ can be with us for a lot of, a few years to come back, so our staff actually views this as a leaping off level,” stated American Eagle CMO Craig Brommers. “Again-to-school actually is our Tremendous Bowl and we’re spending some huge cash round expertise and shock activations and content material creation to chop by initially.”
The revival of “Stay Your Life” was impressed by client analysis throughout Gen Alpha, millennials and the retailer’s goal Gen Z viewers that sought to uncover how the generations regard American Eagle and what they search for in a clothes model. Among the many findings was the sentiment that the retailer is loyal to values like self-expression. Respondents extra broadly additionally indicated a starvation for human connection and actual experiences.
American Eagle is leaning into each of these insights with “Stay Your Life,” Brommers stated, noting his perception that “iconic manufacturers run towards who they’re.”
“Similar to ‘Simply Do It’ for Nike or ‘My Calvin’s’ from Calvin Klein and even ‘Aerie Actual,’ there’s just a few issues that make sense,” stated Brommers.
New power, identical denim
American Eagle’s fall marketing campaign is headlined by tennis star Gauff, who is ready to compete within the Paris Olympics, together with Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence and actors Kristine Froseth and Nikki Rodriguez, who star in Gen Z-focused sequence “The Buccaneers” and “My Life with the Walter Boys,” respectively. By means of its tie-up with Gauff, the retailer will unveil a Coco Gauff x American Eagle collaboration on Aug. 15 that features a nod to the athlete’s iconic U.S. Open quote, “Thanks to the individuals who didn’t consider in me.”
Expertise featured within the retailer’s marketing campaign, who will seem in digital, in-store, social and out-of-home adverts, have been chosen to raised goal the “Stay Your Life” mantra at Gen Z. Brommers described the group because the “hustle era.”
“These are multi-hyphenated people who actually encapsulate Gen Z,” the exec stated. “They’re athletes, they’re activists, they’re communicators, they’re enterprise folks.”
The ambassadors additionally fulfill what the marketer describes as American Eagle’s “ardour pillars,” or the important thing pursuits of Gen Z, which embody classes like gaming, social media, sports activities and neighborhood influence. The retailer repeatedly leverages a buyer panel consisting of round 2,000 folks aged 15-25 to assemble insights that drive culturally related advertising and marketing. Quite a few advertising and marketing efforts have been impressed by the panel, like final 12 months’s tie-up with Amazon Prime Collection “The Summer season I Turned Fairly.”
“We have now one of the best rattling denims on the market and all of the market share information would showcase that, however I don’t suppose you might be competing on the degree we’re competing at simply on the rational, I believe you truly do need to compete on the emotional as properly.”
Craig Brommers
CMO, American Eagle
American Eagle’s newest transfer comes at a excessive level for the retailer, which reported report first quarter income of $1.1 billion. The back-to-school season is a significant alternative for the model to maintain momentum rolling, although spending for the interval is anticipated to fall barely from $31.9 billion final 12 months to $31.3 billion in 2024, based on Deloitte. Different forecasts yield a sunnier outlook — JLL expects spending to surge almost 22% — offering Brommers a way of hopefulness.
“One factor that has been resilient through the years is that folks will, in reality, assist their youngsters and put them first, so I believe we’re optimistic about this back-to-school season,” the exec stated.
Different parts of the back-to-school push embody pop-ups in school soccer video games to faucet into Gen Z’s sports activities fixation. American Eagle’s partnership with Lawrence represents the primary time the model has had an NFL star fronting one among its campaigns.
Emotional, not simply rational
To have interaction Gen Z’s appreciation for self-expression and authenticity — a tactic adopted by different entrepreneurs this season — American Eagle has teamed with Life on Movie and over 200 folks, together with actors AnnaSophia Robb, Chris Briney and Jonathan Daviss, to seize disposable digicam footage showcasing how they dwell their lives. The footage can be edited right into a video montage that can be shared throughout each the expertise and the model’s social media channels, representing a extra candid type of content material than the model normally places ahead in its back-to-school advertising and marketing , Brommers defined.
“I believe that’s why I’m so excited by this marketing campaign and the way it differs from issues we’ve finished prior to now,” Brommers stated. “In case you quick ahead 30 days, when you quick ahead 60 days, I’m unsure the place we can be with this marketing campaign as a result of we actually need our clients to discover what ‘Stay Your Life’ means to them, and we’re going to observe them the place they assist take this marketing campaign.”
Extra guerrilla-style advertising and marketing, like customized movies projected on American Eagle shops, invitations clients to “be part of the marketing campaign,” although full particulars are but to be revealed. Three-dimensional billboards in markets like New York will complement a slate of out of doors activations which can be supposed to blow final 12 months’s back-to-school efforts — described on the time because the model’s largest out of doors push for the reason that pandemic — out of the water.
“We’ve received some actually loopy revolutionary issues arising within the out of doors house,” Brommers stated. “I believe we’re within the leisure enterprise as a lot as we’re within the retail enterprise, so we needs to be difficult ourselves to be as entertaining as doable.”
The array of channels American Eagle is activating symbolizes the various pursuits of Gen Z, Brommers defined, whereas the nods to self-expression and inclusion are supposed to strengthen its reference to shoppers on an emotional degree. That focus has helped the retailer keep in enterprise for almost 5 many years.
“We have now one of the best rattling denims on the market and all of the market share information would showcase that, however I don’t suppose you might be competing on the degree we’re competing at simply on the rational,” Brommers stated. “I believe you truly do need to compete on the emotional as properly.”
