How Retail Giant American Eagle Creates Authenticity With Their Customers

Why we’re all in on performance branding – and how it can transform your growth.

How Retail Giant American Eagle Creates Authenticity With Their Customers

Bryan Karas

January 31, 2019

It’s a weird concept, but today, every brand is fighting to be more and more authentic…

From unpolished marketing videos to cause marketing campaigns, brands continue to manufacture ways to “appear” real or to come off as socially driven.

And one way the retail brand American Eagle creates authenticity with their GenZ customers – a customer base that thrives off diversity, empowerment and inclusion – is to simply let their customers control the brand’s content. It’s apart of the #AExME campaign.

Chad Kessler, American Eagle Global Brand President said, “This spring, AE is amplifying the voices of our customers by joining forces with a group of inspiring Gen-Zers to help encourage others to share their unique style through our spring collection and Ne(X)t Level Jeans.”

The brand introduced #AExME as a pledge to forgo using models and feature only real customers styling themselves in its marketing.

Interesting…

We’ve talked about this before. Macy’s created a similar program using real employees as influencers. Giving your customers (or employees) the creative control to produce content – videos, images etc) is probably the most genuine way to create authenticity.

Side note: one way to not build authenticity – or at least create online backlash from haters – is to stage your product videos and images in a “too good to be true” environment. Just check out this blog post if you’re curious to read more…

It’s hard to believe that American Eagle just finds a list of customers and gives them total creative freedom – creating content that will be used in marketing materials across multiple channels isn’t easy.

But you don’t want to tell them exactly what to create because it’ll be less authentic. So there does need to be a little bit of hand holding so that their creative ideas and expression compliments the brand. Create talking points, jump on the phone with them, discuss their ideas and provide “guidance” on shots, filters and anything else you think will help them reach their full potential.

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