American Eagle on Wednesday launched its first campaign as part of its five-year partnership with Spanish soccer star Lamine Yamal, per details shared with Marketing Dive. Dropped a day in advance of the World Cup kickoff, “Ready for the World” ties together Yamal’s readiness for the tournament with his burgeoning role as a cultural figure.
The campaign is the latest effort from the retailer that seeks to engage Gen Z consumers by tying up with buzzy celebrities and cultural moments, like its much-discussed partnership with actor Sydney Sweeney.
“One of the successful parts of our marketing mix is working with boldface talent who are not just participating in culture, but they’re defining culture,” said American Eagle CMO Craig Brommers. “When you think about soccer… there is one force that is emerging as the face of global soccer, and that is Lamine Yamal.”
A 15-second hero video heavy with quick edits and photographic effects features Yamal on a soundstage, wearing denim and juggling a soccer ball. After introducing himself and saying the campaign's tagline, the 18-year-old phenom blows a kiss and winks. The campaign will run across web and social channels, including Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest and Snapchat, owned by the brand and the ambassador, as well as on connected TV and in out-of-home.
The American Eagle brand in Q1 2026 saw comparable sales decline 2% year over year, but marketing remains a crucial investment and key driver of long-term growth across its parent company’s portfolio, executives said on a call discussing the earnings.
Marketing Dive caught up with Brommers to talk about the new campaign and other cultural plays, as well as how recent activities around creators and TikTok Shop are playing out.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
MARKETING DIVE: On American Eagle’s most recent earnings call, there was discussion of how marketing spend will shift in the back half of the year. Can you elaborate on that?
CRAIG BROMMERS: In today's modern marketing mix, you have levers that work for short-, medium- and long-term success. Investments made in talent like Lamine Yamal should have long-lasting brand and business impact. As a public company, we have to be mindful of our commercial results, and especially our quarter-to-quarter results, and that’s where you lean even heavier into mid- and lower-funnel media to drive those results.
But I can tell you this unequivocally: You cannot be a retail brand that has survived and thrived for 50 years without making bets that don’t pay off today. As we think about the story arc for 2026, we wanted to make sure we started off with a strong cultural impact with our country music campaign featuring Ella Langley, with our second Sydney Sweeney campaign, which was a monster success out of the gate, and now with Lamine Yamal, the face of the No. 1 sporting event on the planet.
All of those partnerships have short-, medium- and long-term impact, and so as a retail CMO, it’s my opportunity to balance those out to longer-term success. We’re really excited about the momentum that we are seeing in the marketplace behind the brand, and as we discussed on the earnings call, converting that consideration into commercial success this summer and back-to-school is our priority.
Tell me about the partnership with Yamal and how he represents a brand fit for American Eagle.
The one thing that Lamine is defined by is his self-confidence and self-expression. When we were working with him and his team on this initial campaign, that was the vibe that we very much wanted to lean into. The tagline “Ready for the World” is very purposeful. Lamine is an unbelievable global superstar already, but he acknowledges that his star is just beginning to really rise here in the States, so he is ready for that spotlight.
Even though I’m saying he is an emerging star here in the States, we’ve done the research: Young people already recognized him as one of the most important and most influential sporting figures. He’s already become such a force, but I just think over the next couple months you’ll see that star shine even brighter.
What does the partnership mean for American Eagle and how will it come to life?
American Eagle is an American-based brand and most of our sales are here in the U.S., but we do have a strong and growing international presence. Our partners were giddy to learn that we were able to land Lamine Yamal. He works with only blue chip sponsors — think McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Adidas — and for us to be able to work with him is such a score, I guess, pun intended, for the brand and for our international partners as well.
The cool thing about this multiyear partnership is not only is he going to be wearing core American Eagle product, but we’re also going to be dropping a number of collaborations with Lamine in the coming months and years. His style, which is really defined by street style, is an area that our current assortment doesn’t fully embrace, and so we’re both interested in playing off of each other and finding different ways to highlight style, with American Eagle bringing this heritage denim vibe and Lamine bringing this youthful confidence with a lean into street style.
The AE Creator Community has had over 9,000 creators join since the February launch. What does that say about this space?
This has been a monster success out of the gate. As we think about what’s important to our marketing mix, there are three things that always lead it: customer, culture and community. Obviously, the new creator community that we’re building leans heavily into that third one.
The exciting thing is the engagement in this particular community so far. You can launch anything, you can post huge follower growth and all this stuff, but it doesn’t mean anything if people don’t engage in it.
For a brand this big, you want to be a top-down brand, but you also want to be a bottom-up brand. Obviously, top down is leaning into people like Lamine and Sydney, but bottom up is leaning into people who are influential in their communities, and those two aspects together help keep a brand that is turning 50 years old next year healthy, vibrant and relevant.
The brand has been on TikTok for years. What drove you to launch on TikTok Shop in May?
We launched a couple weeks ago [and had] great success out of the gate. We’ll lean even more into it as we get closer and closer to the “Super Bowl of denim,” which is our back-to-school period, which launches roughly August 1.
I think the biggest unlock for us is the scale is there, the measurement model has matured and we have to continue to look at new ways in which to engage with young audiences. We have 900 physical retail stores, the second-largest store fleet in America. Younger audiences are back in the mall in a big way, and we’re really excited about it, but we know they’re also engaging with more emerging commerce platforms — TikTok Shop being one of them, DoorDash, which we partner with, is another. We’re excited to continue to lean into these new opportunities,
How has the apparel partnership with Amazon Prime Video’s “Off Campus” gone?
We [previously] partnered with “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” and the biggest question I got internally from my business partners was, “Can you find us the next ‘Summer I Turned Pretty,’ because that was a monster hit.” “Off Campus” has now surpassed it in terms of viewership.
It’s very important to find these cultural moments. Sometimes they’re talent, but sometimes they’re not. They can be a streaming show, a festival, whatever, but when you are a specialty retailer and you’re competing against fast fashion or retailers on TikTok Shop, the importance of investing at the exact right time in some of these cultural heat moments is super important.
