For this back-to-school season, American Eagle is filling sorority houses with denim, sending creators into malls and selling limited-edition jeans in its physical stores as it attempts to turn the back-to-school frenzy into customer acquisition and denim sales.
The retailer’s 2026 back-to-school campaign, launched on July 22, spans approximately 10 weeks and combines mall events, campus partnerships and major talent. The latter includes Sydney Sweeney, recently signed country singer Ella Langley and footballer Lamine Yamal, who was a part of the Spain squad that just won the World Cup. Unlike last year, American Eagle is not attempting to build the season around one mass-cultural campaign.
“In 2025, American Eagle launched a campaign that created monoculture,” said Craig Brommers, American Eagle’s chief marketing officer, referring to its Sydney Sweeney campaign. “As we prepared for this season, we did, as we always do, a lot of listening to our core Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha customer base. The one thing that struck us is this is not a monoculture moment.”
The 2025 campaign delivered more than cultural attention. Within six weeks of its July 2025 launch, American Eagle said the Sydney Sweeney campaign had helped attract 790,000 new customers across every U.S. county, added nearly 320,000 social followers, and generated denim sellouts and positive traffic. At the time, Brommers described it as the company’s most expensive campaign to date.
The longer-term financial results were more mixed. In the third quarter of 2025, AEO reported record revenue of $1.36 billion, up 6% year over year, while comparable sales increased 4%. At the American Eagle brand, specifically, comparable sales rose 1%, compared with 11% growth at Aerie. Higher advertising spending also contributed to an increase in selling, general and administrative expenses.
The campaign therefore provides both the model and the challenge for 2026: It proved AE could generate enormous awareness and customer acquisition through a single celebrity-led moment, but the more modest sales growth at the namesake brand leaves the retailer under pressure to convert this year’s broader network of creators, stores and campus partnerships more directly into purchases.
This year, American Eagle is spreading its investment across three areas it believes are shaping youth culture: sports, malls and college campuses. Internally, the company calls the approach a “top-down, bottom-up creator strategy.” Sweeney, Langley and Yamal provide broad awareness, while smaller creators are expected to influence shoppers closer to the point of purchase.
“We still believe that working with two to three boldface names that are defining culture is important for us,” Brommers said. “And yet, we also have thousands and thousands of real people advocating on behalf of our brand and on behalf of our products in this must-win timeframe.”
The most developed part of that strategy is American Eagle’s expansion into RushTok, the social media ecosystem surrounding U.S. sorority recruitment. Beginning in August, the retailer will work with five sorority chapters, including groups at the University of Florida, the University of Alabama and Arizona State University.
The program will include chapter-house takeovers, product displays, giveaways, events and rooms redesigned as backdrops for rush-related content. American Eagle will also contract separately with individual chapter members who have already developed online followings.
American Eagle expects to launch the program with more than 25 creators, with additional participants joining throughout the school year. Confirmed creators include University of Florida student Avery Katherine Wood (498,000 Instagram followers; 2 million TikTok followers), Ohio State University student Naelle Eva (2,000 Instagram followers), University of Florida student Olivia Kao (3,500 Instagram followers; 24,000 TikTok followers), University of Alabama student Haylee Puckett (5,200 Instagram followers; 7,000 TikTok followers) and Arizona State University student Isabelle Brooke (9,900 Instagram followers; 18,500 TikTok followers).
Each of those creators is being contracted individually while also participating through the wider chapter program. Their agreements combine paid content, affiliate activity, event appearances and product gifting, according to the company. Each partner creator and chapter is expected to produce between four and 10 pieces of content across Instagram and TikTok. American Eagle declined to disclose the financial terms.
“RushTok has become a commercial opportunity for the girls that go through recruitment and for the chapters themselves,” Brommers said. “It is a proper business partnership.”
The retailer is effectively adapting elements of collegiate name, image and likeness marketing for Greek life, turning its partner sorority houses into local creator networks capable of producing dozens of pieces of American Eagle content during recruitment.
Other brands have already demonstrated RushTok’s commercial potential. Kendra Scott, whose Elisa pendant became a recurring feature in recruitment outfit videos in 2023, followed its organic visibility with a multi-college pop-up tour. The jewelry brand has since reported double-digit year-over-year growth during August rush weeks, according to its agency January Digital. Poppi, meanwhile, has sponsored sorority bid-day events, while brands including Skims, Maybelline, LoveShackFancy and Princess Polly have developed products, gifting programs or recruitment-focused edits around the RushTok audience.
American Eagle’s sorority partnerships are intended to build peer-to-peer awareness during recruitment, while a separate series of mall activations will try to convert broader interest into store visits and denim sales. Throughout July, August and September, American Eagle will release limited-edition low-rise jeans priced from $69.95-$89.95 across all stores. Selected locations, including Aventura Mall, Roosevelt Field and Scottsdale Fashion Square, will also host in-person events featuring creators, styling sessions, customization, giveaways and localized merchandise.
It’s a departure from the digital-first model retailers often use to manufacture urgency. “Sometimes you would drop an exclusive collection on e-commerce or maybe inside your app, and you would drive clicks,” Brommers said. “But we are really seeing a tremendous return to the mall from young people.”
But when they make the trip, they’re seeking more than just products.
“If you are taking the time and expense of getting in your car, filling up that very expensive gas, paying for parking and going into a mall, what we’ve heard is it’s not just about a transaction,” Brommers said. “[Our shoppers] want an experience.”
American Eagle’s other back-to-school initiatives include Mall Diaries, a social series built around early-2000s mall nostalgia, and Jeans for Life, an August promotion encouraging shoppers to try on denim and enter an in-store giveaway.
In addition, the retailer is leveraging its Yamal partnership to connect its denim business to global sports culture. American Eagle signed the footballer to its first five-year ambassador deal after Brommers met him in September 2025. The company subsequently temporarily renamed its social channels “Lamine’s Eagles” and renamed its bestselling fit “The AE 19,” referencing Yamal’s jersey number and age.
“This is a big bet,” Brommers said. “This is a five-year partnership, which is something we have never done before.”
On September 3, Yamal and American Eagle will launch a collaborative product collection.
“The next couple of weeks are as important to us as the Black Friday holiday period,” Brommers said. “We are throwing everything and anything at it to continue this momentum.”
American Eagle will judge the campaign against jeans market-share gains, new-customer acquisition, and traffic across stores and e-commerce. The retailer says it is currently the No. 1 jeans brand among U.S. consumers ages 15-25, though it does not disclose its percentage share. Brommers declined to provide numerical targets or say how the investment compares with 2025.
“We have pretty sophisticated modern marketing measurement tools that will allow us to understand which of these activations and partnerships drive business results,” he said.
