In the 1st episode of the 7th season of The Office, Michael Scott hired his nephew as an assistant. And as you would expect from Michael Scott, it was a bad hire. This episode shows how naive he was and how bad he was at managing people. But this episode also shows how great a marketer he was.
Everyone in the office complains about Luke because he is bad at carrying out his duties. Very normal: remember, he was Michael’s nephew, and that was the only fact Michael could keep secret for quite a while. Once he reveals everything, the employees wonder: Why wouldn’t you tell us? And this is where Michael proves he is a marketing genius.
“Because I wanted you to come to me,” he explains. “And say, ‘Wow, he is so great.’ And I was gonna say, ‘Well, it’s in the genes.’ And I was actually gonna be wearing jeans.”
Interestingly, the official YouTube clip cuts out that part of Michael’s speech, which would have come after 1:44.
You know who else has great jeans? Sydney Sweeney.
In 2025, American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) launched a campaign featuring the 27-year-old actress. She speaks about her hair, eye color, and personality, saying that “genes are passed down from parents to offspring.” Then she uses a pun, stating that her jeans are blue. The ad concludes: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.”
This is exactly what Michael Scott was thinking about but never had a chance to do. And maybe that was for the best, because after American Eagle did it, a huge backlash started against the company and even Sydney Sweeney.
This is a very interesting case study in marketing for two reasons. First, it shows that audiences have changed dramatically in the past 15 years, and what they would have laughed at back then may now seem insulting. Second, it may still work.
About the first point: audiences change. That’s undeniable, but the marketing application is slightly deeper: no messaging is valuable or creative in isolation, and everything must be examined in the current context, even if it is borrowed. I found no records showing that anyone at American Eagle was inspired by Michael Scott, but the similarity is too close to ignore (come on, the series was streamed for 57 billion minutes).
People’s criticism was multifaceted and included ideological accusations such as “white supremacy,” feminist concerns such as the sexualization of women, and so on. Some of these arguments felt overstretched, especially because American Eagle has worked with diverse public figures before, but they still show how quickly a campaign can lose control of its intended meaning.
But this doesn’t matter in the age of social media and user-generated content, because the decoding of brand messaging ultimately belongs to internet users. If they decide the campaign is wrong, then it is, at least for them. And I don’t mean that a brand should be afraid of being misunderstood and become a people-pleaser.
My second point was about the fact that, despite being misunderstood, the campaign worked. It generated 40 billion impressions on the internet. This includes people commenting, liking, sharing, and so on. But one thing I strongly dislike is presenting social media metrics as business achievements without talking about their actual impact on the business.
Reports vary, but the official figures from American Eagle’s chief marketing officer, Craig Brommers, show that after the campaign, the brand acquired 790,000 new customers, saw a 2% increase in revenue through the end of that quarter, and had a stock jump of 25%.
I have other observations too that show that Michael Scott—or whoever wrote the episode—was a great marketer, and maybe I will write about them later. That’s a personal thought. But the underlying fact is that he predicted a 2025 advertising trend 15 years earlier.
Although the audience has changed since then, some things never get old anyway. Just like a good pair of jeans.