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Spot On with Link Lauren
Longtime Levi's Jeans Exec REVEALS What Sydney Sweeney American Eagle Ads Show, with Jennifer Sey
00:16:15
Link Lauren and former Levi’s Chief Brand Officer and XX-XY Athletics founder Jennifer Sey discuss the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle backlash and why woke, trans, non-binary ad marketing
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- [00:00]
Link
We all have that piece. You know the one, the thing that's so you. You've basically become known for it. And if you don't have yours yet, you'll find it on ebay. Let me put you on fashionistas. Ebay is where you'll find those. One of a kind. Can't stop researching. Stay up dreaming about pieces again and again. I'm talking that Miu Miu off the Runway red leather bomber, the Custo Barcelona top with the cowboy on it, or that Patagonia fleece in the 2017 colorway.
- [00:28]
Jennifer Tsay
All.
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Link
All these finds are on ebay and they even offer millions of main character pieces backed by authenticity guarantee. Ebay is the place for pre loved and vintage fashion. Ebay, things people love.
- [00:45]
Unknown Host
Well, my friends, welcome to the Friday spot. We've come up with a name for this little mini Friday edition of Spot on with link. Lauren, tell us what you think about the name, but we're going with the Friday spot for now. Sort of like we've changed the background. We're trying a lot of things here. I'm an open book. Do we like it? Do we not like it? You guys tell me. But the conversation, the conversation this week was all about Sydney Sweeney in that American Eagle ad, right? She was accused of spreading Nazi propaganda, of being a fascist simply for being a real woman in a commercial promoting a product that she was paid for, right? And we've seen this trend of so many brands moving away from woke and back to common sense. And I wanted to bring on someone who I love, who's a friend of the show. She sent me incredible products. She works with Riley Gaines and so many women you look up to. This is none other than Jennifer Tsay, the founder of XXXY Athletics. She's also just a thought leader. So, Jennifer, thank you for being here. How are you doing, my friend?
- [01:41]
Jennifer Tsay
I'm great. Thanks so much for having me and congrats on the show. I'm a huge fan. I listen when I exercise all the time.
- [01:48]
Unknown Host
Well, thank you. Thank you so much. I feel like you're the perfect person to talk about this with because you've been at the forefront of restoring common sense, right? Getting men out of women's sports, bringing this conversation up to the apex of culture. I don't know what happened the last few years where everything just went insane and woke. And I wanted to get your thoughts on the Sydney Sweeney commercial. Why do you think she's getting so much backlash? I think a little bit of it has to do with maybe some of the Insecurities of women at home. There's something about Sydney Sweeney being in this ad that maybe triggers them to lash out. What do you think the backlash is all about?
- [02:21]
Jennifer Tsay
Well, I probably have made more jeans ads than any human on the planet. I worked for Levi's at 23 years. I worked at an ad agency on Levi's for three. Before that I worked at Gap. Like, I mean, I, I got 30 years worth of jeans ads. So I will tell you, there is nothing new here. There's nothing new under the sun. This looks like every jeans ad from the 80s and 90s. It's a hot girl in jeans. Not just jeans ads. I mean, you're young. I don't know if you remember the Cindy Crawford Pepsi ad in the 90s at the gas station in jeans and a white tank top. Pretty girls in jeans looking hot sell stuff. And guess what? Hot guys looking hot in jeans sell stuff too. That it's an age old formula. So do cute dogs and men with babies like hot guys? I mean, it works. It's not complicated. And I think it just feels like this sort of like revenge of the normies and this resurgence of just being normal. This is what we like. It's normal. She's beautiful. She's an it girl. She's got 25 million Instagram followers. And I will tell you, I've seen this ad at least 100 times. Not once in paid media. That is a success. Think about all that earned media. And it's making people mad because they've lost control. They all their cancellation tactics saying unattractive people are just as good as attractive people look. Some people are better looking, some people are smarter, Some people are faster and win Olympic gold medals. That is a merit based world. And she is more beautiful. And we all want that aspiration in an ad. I don't want to look at someone that looks like me.
- [03:51]
Unknown Host
Absolutely.
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Jennifer Tsay
Yeah. That's not fun.
- [03:54]
Unknown Host
Everyone in my comments, they're talking about the Brooke Shields ad from years ago. They're like, this feels like almost they're paying homage. The Brooke Shields Adam and I feel the same way you do. And I said this on the last episode. If I go into a Nike store to buy sneakers or gym shorts, every guy on the Wall is like 6 foot 4 and ripped and has a six pack that doesn't look like me. Am I offended?
- [04:12]
Jennifer Tsay
No.
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Unknown Host
Because I'm a secure person and I'm there to buy the sneakers and the gym shorts. And I think some of these people just want to feel outraged. But honestly, I have to ask you about this. I feel like the pendulum started to swing back and we really started to take back the culture war with the Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light situation. I feel like the backlash to Dylan Mulvaney and Bud Light where people said, okay, you have a man who makes fun of women, makes a mockery of women, promoting a beer that tons of men like to drink. So don't you think that was sort of the beginning of the pendulum swinging in the end of all this woke nonsense?
- [04:44]
Jennifer Tsay
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, to go back to your visit to the Nike store, do you want to go into a store and look at fat guys eating Cheetos on the couch, playing video games? Is that going to make you want to wear the sneakers? Not me. I want to look at whoever the latest athlete is they have in there. But yes, it was a huge turning point because everyone stood up and said, no, you don't get to tell us what to like or what to think. It wasn't, you know, of course the mainstream media wanted to make it about transphobia and bigotry. It isn't. These are red blooded American men. They like to look at hot girls and that's been a mainstay in beer advertising. They like to watch sports and they've been told for the last two decades that that makes them terrible people. The Democrat party has told them that makes them bad people. And then culture, you know, television shows and movies and everything has told them the things that they like hot girls and bikinis and jeans make them bad people. And they said, you know what, we're done. Men aren't women. And the irony of all this link is, you know as well as I do that if American Eagle put Dylan Mulvaney in the ad trying his darndest to look like Sydney Sweeney, it would have been stunning and brave. Trying his darndest and failing now they would have gotten the Bud Light treatment. And I think this sort of pretend manufactured backlash and outrage is not working. The Stock is up 20%. You know, we don't know how sales are. We'll know at their next earnings report. I expect the sales are amazing and the stock will just surge further from there. So their decade long body positivity campaign didn't work and they're going back to a tried and true formula and Bud Light was absolutely a turning point.
- [06:24]
Unknown Host
Absolutely. And I feel like a lot of the women in my comments have been bringing up the old school Victoria's Secret fashion show. Right. I, as a gay man used to love the Victoria's Secret fashion show and tons of women of all different shapes and sizes. And in my family and group of friends, we all have women of all different shapes, sizes, backgrounds, and everyone is beautiful. But we want to look at these, like, size quadruple zero, like Amazonian superhuman aliens come down the Runway in ridiculous outfits while Maroon 5 plays in the background and sue us for wanting some entertainment. And I think if you're just insecure, you're going to be triggered by that. So don't you think they should kind of bring back the Victoria's Secret fashion show in all of its glory?
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Jennifer Tsay
I mean, Victoria's Secret has just been all over the map. They tried to do body positivity, but nobody wanted to look at unattractive women in sexy underwear. Then they sort of tried to go back to that, but they'd lost their footing. They've had internal conflicts and sexual harassment. We don't want that. We don't want sexual harassment of female executives and employees. But, yeah, they should bring back the sizzle and the pizzazz and the sexiness of that brand. But they assumed it was over. But it's not over. It's just a human truth. Men and women like looking at attractive people. And here's what I will tell you. For all the selling us on this idea that everyone is just as beautiful as everyone else, did you know that breast augmentation surgeries have been up 15% a year for the last five years in a row? So no one was buying it. Women wanted the big boobs. Now they're all on Ozempic. We all want to be skinny and have big boobs, and no one was buying this idea that being £400 was attractive.
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Unknown Host
What was so funny?
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Jennifer Tsay
Or healthy.
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Unknown Host
Or healthy. And, you know, I've been saying, maha, make America healthy again. It also means make America hot again. It was so funny to me. Lizzo, who was one of the biggest body positivity icons, she was like, I am thick and big and beautiful. Okay? She's lost all this weight. She has, like, personal trainers, personal chefs. She's probably on Ozempic. She says she's not, but there's no way that weight is flying off without Ozempic. Everyone is trying to get Ozempic or Semaglutide or Manjaro or all whatever they're called now. And so it's like, you guys are full of crap. Okay? Even the celebrities who are all body positivity during the Biden administration, they're like, well, shit, let me get on Ozempic now.
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Jennifer Tsay
Gotta, gotta drop Those lbs I want. Yeah, exactly. Everybody was. It was. It was. Everyone was full of crap. I think it does sort of go back to this, like, merit argument. And it's not that beautiful people are better people than the rest. So nobody should be made to feel that they're a bad person if they struggle with their weight. But there is such a thing as people who are more attractive and more beautiful. Just like there are people that are smarter and there are people that are better athletes. And we can't. That's what makes it cool to be alive. You know, like, why do we want to flatten everything and have everybody be the same? It's gross.
- [09:15]
Unknown Host
Well, so that's something I talk about all the time. And, like, when I go speak to young people or young Republicans or in my videos, I say, the best thing you can do if you're a young adult, look in the mirror and do the work to become secure with what you bring to the table. Right. We're not all six foot tall athletes. We're not all gonna cure cancer. Find out what you do that makes you great and you special. And it's probably not being a supermodel because 99.9% of us aren't gonna be in an ad or walk or Runway. It's like, for me, when I was growing up, I'm like, okay, communication is my skill. Skill. I can't throw a ball. I can't win in track and field. I can't do this. But be secure. And there's nothing wrong with finding out, okay, what do I bring to the table that I can do? Well? And you shouldn't allow yourself to be offended because you can't just fit into every other vertical or every other area. And I feel like that's good advice for young women. I know you've worked with young women for years with Riley Gaines and getting men out of women's sports. I also have to show you. We have this picture I want to put up on screen. I'm looking at it now in the, in the rundown of the Calvin Klein ad where they had like, the non binary trans people, I think the women with beards. What the hell was Calvin Klein thinking? Jennifer, as a maven in this industry for decades, even though you look way too young to have been in the industry for decades, what do you make of these ads? Like, what the hell were they saying in the meetings at Calvin Klein? What is sort of the calculus when you roll something out like this?
- [10:32]
Jennifer Tsay
I. I know the. The hairy chest and. Yeah.
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Unknown Host
Yes.
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Jennifer Tsay
Yeah. No one has everybody went insane in the last 10 years? So first of all, understand all of these fashion companies reside on the coast. So they're basically in New York or Los Angeles. They live in woke bubbles. Everybody thinks like they do. They think everybody, everyone they know is caught in the same sort of Brooklyn bubble they are. And they think the rest of the country is. And they think if you don't think that you're a Nazi. We're all Nazis now, Link. I mean, I'm a Nazi because I think that, you know, I'm a Jewish Nazi because I think that men can't be women. And I thought public schools should be open during COVID I'm obviously a Nazi. But they think everyone in the flyover states, people they've never met, are just not worth addressing. They're just too horrible, they're too bigoted. And they believe as corporate executives that they are actually social justice warriors. It's ridiculous. And so they just all talk to themselves. But here's the thing that you have to remember. They work in corporate America because they like corporate America because they like making money. They thought that was they're sort of of two minds. They want to believe they're the good people, the social justice warriors, but they also want to lie in their pockets. They wouldn't have gone into corporate, they would have gone into non profit work and advocacy if that's what they really wanted to do. So they thought that was a marketing strategy that would work because they thought everybody agreed with that. They realize now they don't because of Bud Light and Target and all these brands and they are going to to jump off and jump back to normie capitalism at normie advertising faster than you can say just do it. I mean, look at the Nike ads from the last couple of years, the last week of, you know, dads and babies.
- [12:14]
Unknown Host
Exactly. I feel like there's this return to traditional American values, the American dream, where after November 5th it was okay to say, you know what, I want to prioritize. Faith, family, normalcy, and let's say goodbye to all of the woke crap. And I feel that way too because I went to nyu, lived in the Village for years. Once you get out and travel, like when I started going to like Iowa and traveling the country, especially during the primaries of the last election, your whole worldview changes. And I tell all my friends in New York and Los Angeles, there's a whole world between LA and New York that you like to fly over and look down on. But those people are the backbone of your society. That's where your produce comes from. That's where your vegetables come from. Right. Those are the workers and the steel mills in Michigan and all of that. And I think these folks who sit around in these buildings in New York City and especially at Vogue, and they sit around, they think the world goes like, New York, New Jersey, a bunch of, bunch of other stuff. And then la. And I think now they're realizing conservatives and even just independent normal people have money. And we, we saw that with like the Sound of Freedom movie. That was a turning point where they realized, oh, we can do conservative programming and there's money there. They're going to open their wallets and their pocketbooks if it's something they like. So don't you think that capitalism and the free market is going to just totally get rid of this woke stuff even more over the next few years?
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Jennifer Tsay
I do, Norman. Capitalism is back. I think we'll look back at this American Bud Light as the pivot point and then American Eagle with Sydney Sweeney. And you know what's really telling is all the manufactured backlash that the mainstream media wants to pretend is happening. There has not been an apology issue. Has Sydney Sweeney said I'm sorry? Has American Eagle said I'm sorry? Now we're going to do a campaign with Lizzo? No, they haven't. So that to me, three years ago there would have been an apology. They would have panicked and apologized, but they're watching the jeans fly off the shelves. It's going to take a while for the message to sink in. And look how long it took. It wasn't like the WOKE advertising happened overnight. It happened starting in the early 2010s, and then it really was the summer of 2020 and the BLM rallies and Covid and everybody being crazy that it took off and every corporation disavowed their white privilege and vowed to do better and hired ahead of dei, which they've now. So it's, you know, if it took 10 years to get us there, it's going to take 10 years to unwind it. But we're going to start to see it. There are some companies that are going to be braver than others, that are, frankly, more in touch with the American people. People. I mean, American Eagle is not, I believe they're in Pennsylvania, so a little more Normie. You know, they're not, as, you know, New York centric, I'll say. And so I think they're probably a little more in touch with regular people. I think they're more able to dismiss the, the media holding their nose up at this, the best company, and the NBC saying, you could have avoided this catastrophe by hiring the people we tell you to hire. I mean, the critics are everywhere. So I think it's going to start we certainly at xxx y athletes. I mean, we are only a year old, so I don't want to overstate, you know, our size or anything, but we're putting out a normie message. It gets positioned as political. But all we're saying Link is what 80% of Americans agree with it with, which is men can't be women and women deserve their own sports. And it's resonating.
- [15:23]
Unknown Host
No, absolutely. I think this is an 80, 20 issue. It's probably way more skewed than that. It's probably like 90 10. But I think some people are scared of being called transphobic or bigoted. Right. They're so scared of getting canceled. So they don't want to say it. But no, majority of Americans, they don't want men and women's sports. They want common sense. They don't want, you know, women with beards who look like circus clowns and their commercials. And so I think things are going to turn. And I want to have you back on Jennifer say to have an even, like, longer conversation about this because I'm here to tell you I feel I'm a little bit psychic. In the next month or two, we're gonna have another ad come out that's even more woke than we've ever seen before. I think the left and these folks are gonna try to sort of do a backlash in Pendulum. I think we're gonna see something so woke and ridiculous, we're gonna have to talk about that too, because they're gonna be fighting their culture war.
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Jennifer Tsay
I can't wait. Well, yeah, there is a segment of the population that will not let this go. Their identity is tied to being right and being on the right side of history and being social justice warriors. And we're gonna see some really ludicrous stuff. And we're going to see some more Sydney Sweeney type ads, and that's what's going to work. And eventually the grownups in the room in corporate America will stop being afraid of the young employees. They're going to stop being afraid of being canceled because they're going to realize you're not going to get canceled for doing work that drives the business. And everyone's going to 100%.
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Unknown Host
Let's make this money, honey. So I hope everybody checks out. Xx XY athletics. We'll put it in the description, we'll post about it. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much. Have an amazing weekend. Thank you so much for coming on.
- [16:51]
Jennifer Tsay
You too. Thank you. When work gets crazy, I like to.
- [17:01]
Unknown Guest
Stop by the bar after, have a few cold ones.
- [17:04]
Unknown Host
I don't drink at all until 4 o'.
- [17:06]
Jennifer Tsay
Clock.
- [17:07]
Link
We limit ourselves to one bottle of wine a night.
- [17:10]
Unknown Guest
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