Being cool is hard work. It’s not for everyone. Abercrombie & Fitch CEO, Mike Jeffries made this point painfully clear in his 2006 Salon interview. During the interview, Jeffries explained some of A&F’s unsightly marketing practices stating:
“We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely… Abercrombie is only interested in people with washboard stomachs who look like they’re about to jump on a surfboard.”
Surprisingly, consumers were not as thankful for the “cool” guidelines Jeffries laid out for them. Almost instantaneously, consumers began voicing their issues against A&F’s practices on social media. The most colorful of these complaints came in the form of #FitchTheHomeless, a campaign started by USC student, Greg Karper. In Karper’s “Abercrombie & Fitch Gets a Brand Readjustment #FitchTheHomeless” YouTube video, Karper asks viewers to donate their A&F clothing to local homeless shelters to rebrand A&F as “The World’s Number One Brand of Homeless Apparel.”
Clever as it may be, Karper’s campaign was met with a fair share of backlash for using the homeless to make his point. Is #FitchTheHomeless just the kind of wake-up call that A&F needs, or does it take segregation to even greater heights?
See the video for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O95DBxnXiSo
~ Matt DiCiero, Social Media Coordinator, The S3 Agency
