American Eagle CMO Craig Brommers has no regrets about those Sydney Sweeney ads. Despite customer backlash to the apparel brand’s “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” campaign, which largely centered on the use of language that some described as racially coded, Brommers told us that AE’s most expensive campaign to date was money well spent. “Sydney Sweeney is worth every single dollar that we invested,” he told Marketing Brew. “Every single marketing metric that I look at is flashing a green light, and we’re only six weeks in.” The campaign, which launched in July, generated an “unprecedented spike” of 790,000 new customers acquired across every county in the US, Brommers said, in addition to nearly 320,000 new social followers, “denim sell outs,” and “strong, positive traffic.” That stands in contrast to third-party data shared with Retail Brew last month that found that foot traffic was down 9% at American Eagle stores in the first week of August, and an Adweek report based on consumer transaction data that suggested online chatter did not lead to an immediate increase in sales. On its earnings call Wednesday, the brand’s parent company, American Eagle Outfitters, reported positive increases in traffic in the month of August and a 2% increase in revenue through the end of the quarter on August 2, which CEO Jay Schottenstein said “exceeded our expectations.” So far, Brommers told us, the Sweeney campaign has generated 40 billion impressions. He disputed claims suggesting that the language used in the American Eagle ad was rage-bait designed to generate clicks and views. Instead, the message was intended to “spark a conversation about optimism, confidence, and self-expression,” he said. “I think the results speak loudly that a broad base of customers understood that.” Continue reading here.—KH | 
