Dive Brief:
- American Eagle is expanding its work with content creators through a new nationwide ambassador program focused on developing long-term relationships, per news shared with Marketing Dive.
- The AE Creator Community streamlines how creators work with American Eagle and offers incentives for regularly promoting and interacting with the brand. Creators can earn points by completing weekly and monthly challenges, such as posting styling videos, and redeem accrued points for products, gift cards and other rewards.
- Applications for the program are open to U.S. consumers 18 years of age and older who have more than 1,000 followers on at least one social platform. American Eagle said it is trying to evolve its creator marketing beyond one-off campaigns.
Dive Insight:
American Eagle’s ambition is to build its largest creator community yet through the new program, which relies heavily on incentives to keep partners consistently talking about the brand. AE Creator Community builds on the foundations of a Live Your Life Affiliate Community that American Eagle introduced last spring in connection to a campaign of the same name, Marketing Dive understands.
American Eagle has gained notice and grown sales with recent campaigns starring high-profile celebrities, including Travis Kelce, Martha Stewart and Sydney Sweeney, while AE Creator Community is designed for broad scale, inclusive of microinfluencers who wield small but avid followings.
AE Creator Community’s launch follows other retailers standing up creator marketplaces as more marketing budgets shift to social channels that are key to winning Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers. Macy’s in January expanded its Style Crew affiliate marketing program to stay competitive on the creator front, with the goal of reaching 1,000 members. Sephora last fall debuted a similar creator-supported affiliate program called My Sephora Storefront.
While American Eagle has been active in the creator space for years, the rewards structure behind AE Creator Community is new, offering $1 for every 1,000 points a creator accrues. Points are earned through participating in challenges, like posting a short TikTok video showing different ways to style an American Eagle outfit or sharing an Instagram story spotlighting the brand’s denim. Rewards include products, affiliate commissions, exclusive discounts and the chance to be featured on American Eagle’s owned channels.
“The more they create, the more they earn, and the more visible they become in the AE community,” the announcement reads. “In short, participation and creativity are rewarded just as much as reach.”
In addition to the points system, AE Creator Community has forums where fans can chat with each other. Participants will also be able to share feedback with the brand that could inform product launches, according to the program’s website.
American Eagle marketing executives have previously acknowledged that content production demands have soared as video-oriented apps like TikTok reshape social media. AE Creator Community is one way to keep the brand present in cultural spaces that help to set apparel trends.
AE Creator Community also arrives as American Eagle continues to expand its influencer and creator marketing purview into new channels, including non-social media ones like the newsletter subscription platform Substack. The brand launched its own Substack, Off the Cuff, last May, and discussed its broader thinking around influencers at the National Retail Federation’s Big Show in January.
“We know that influencers, for all of our brands, are representative of who our customer is. That’s the most important piece,” said Ashley Schapiro, vice president of marketing, media, performance and engagement at American Eagle, during a panel at the industry conference. “For us, it’s finding that balance between aspirational and inspirational, which all of our partners really do share.”
