Aerie Real Campaign - Just how real is it?

Time to get REAL! American Eagle uses no airbrushing – but is it a real sample of today’s girls or just a ploy for more bucks?

This new ad campaign launched by American Eagle’s line Aerie is meant to promote healthy body image in girls by no longer using super models and retouching on their photo shoots.  They are using this ad campaign to sell bras and panties to young girls, and are hoping to sell to more girls by making them feel less self-conscious about their bodies by showing real girls with real flaws. 

They launched this ad campaign with the following image on their website:

None of the subjects are familiar in the ad and I haven’t seen any of them in any other advertisements. The ad campaign began in January 2014 and as of today, they are still continuing with their promise to not retouch photographs.

I first saw the ad on their website when my teenage daughter was looking at clothes.  Then I started seeing news stories about it because in a world of retouching to the point of flawlessness and unachievable bodies, this was huge news.

The persuasive techniques I see on this advertisement are the plain-folks appeal – real girls just like you.  They are getting away from the idea of perfection and using the plain-folks appeal to get girls and young women to believe that just the regular girl down the street wears their products, so they should too. No image of perfection, just a regular girl (although the regular girls down the street in the ad campaign is still thin and doesn’t have stretch marks or cellulite showing).

Aerie also incorporates the Association Principle into their advertising campaign.  They know that girls are super models! They want you to know they love you just the way you are, no need to be perfect! Buy their panties and bras because you’ll be cute too, just the way you are.  It plays on the current trend of backlash against all the retouching that happens in women’s advertising to create a positive feeling of Aerie caring about the girls they sell to “just as they are”.  One of the photos on their site even says “There’s no such thing as a perfect beach body. The real you is sexy.”

They make very good use of the medium.  They have a hashtag (#aerieReal) to make sure they trend on Twitter.  They have information about their Aerie Real campaign all over their website.  And they made sure to make it very public about what they were doing when they first launched the campaign.

American Eagle and Aerie have done something very new and different with this ad.  They have come up with a way to continue to sell bras, panties, and swimsuits to young women while making them feel better about their own bodies.  By proclaiming they will use “real girls” and not retouch, they have approached a part of advertising that hasn’t been done before.  Even celebrities are retouched in photographs, so to come out with a campaign that forgoes the use of retouching is a first of its kind that I know of.

The target audience for this ad campaign is teenagers and young women.  They are wanting to connect with their target audience and make them feel better about themselves to get them to spend money in their store.  But the ad does include stereotypes – the girls are still fairly thin, the photos on the website – while not retouched – are definitely not of the average girl, and they stress being sexy a lot in the ads.  So while they are saying it is about being real, they are still stereotyping the typical girl as a thin, in shape, modelesque type who can look outstanding in a string bikini without any kind of retouching. I find it offensive that they stress being sexy so much since they are targeting teenagers and that they don’t use a wider variety of body types.  Put a larger girl on their, a girl with a lot of freckles, or a girl with a tummy that jiggles a bit.  Those are real girls, so it is still giving a false ideal about what a real girl is.

The ad is very strong in portraying their concern for creating healthy body images by not retouching their photographs.  They really come across as caring for girls, even going so far as having an open letter to the people who go to their website, explaining why they are no longer going to use super models or retouching.  But the weaknesses, as I’ve touched on previously, include the exclusion of girls of all sizes.  Telling an audience you are going to use real girls and then excluding girls that make up the majority of the population isn’t really using a representation of society.  It is still using models, just not making them airbrushed perfect.  Girls pick up on that. My teenager did.  While a memorable ad because it made me go “FINALLY” when I first read about it, excited that my teenager might actually have some ads she could look at and relate to the models, it is memorable also because it failed in the reprenstation of a real girl.  It does effectively connect with the target audience though.  My daughter and her friends all have talked about the ad and have gone to the website to check out the models and compared their bodies to those on Aerie’s site.  They were able to go “okay, I see a little tiny tummy, and I have a little tiny tummy, so this is cool”.  Doing a quick search on Twitter using the #aerieReal hashtag, it appears they have done an excellent job connecting with the target audience:

I wasn’t able to find an article in any of the suggested media forums, but Time.com did do an article on the campaign and felt the ad was a positive step in the right direction.  They said “In a month in which magazines photoshopping curvaceous celebs have made headlines, American Eagle’s bold move may pay off with consumers who are starting to get fed up with photo alterations.” http://time.com/1187/american-eagle-ditches-photoshop-for-new-lingerie-campaign/ Based on the ad, I will continue to check out the product line and it does compel me to shop there more than I would at say Victoria’s Secret, where airbrushing and supermodels go hand in hand.  I also would recommend Aerie over other stores because they are making an effort. They can’t break the mold yet, but they are trying to make positive steps.

My conclusions from this assignment are that it seems that advertisers are starting to realize that women aren’t all supermodels and we need to be able to relate to women more like us.  I also believe they are trying to make their clothing more appealing to teenagers who don’t have perfect bodies.  I don’t believe they are doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, I think it is a great marketing campaign that has really got people talking and has convinced girls that it is better to shop there because they really do care about them – even though the bottom line for stores will always be how much more product they can sell.  At least it is a step in the right direction.