The Cold Take: July
Welcome to The Cold Take, my monthly round-up of what really happened in marketing. No sensationalism, no breathless headlines and absolutely no luke-warm opinions decreed as “hot takes.”
Instead I’m talking you through the biggest marketing headlines in the past month and explaining the true story behind them, a clear-eyed look at the stories that made noise and the numbers (or lack thereof) to go with them. If it was overblown, misreported or misunderstood, you’ll find it here, calmly unpacked and backed by evidence.
GOV.UK Rebrand
The sensationalist headline:
“Dotty civil servants spend £500k on a full stop”
What actually happened?
The problem is, people struggle to think at scale. They see a £532,000 price tag and immediately convert it into their own salary, house price or number of Tesco meal deals. And fair enough, it is a lot of money. But when you’re managing a brand that serves 70 million people, across thousands of departments, platforms and use cases, you’re not just moving a dot. You’re creating a system that needs to work across accessibility requirements, font licenses, legacy systems, signage, print, digital, internal comms and god knows what else.
Yes, you could argue it was over-engineered. Yes, maybe it didn’t need to happen at all. But what it definitely wasn’t was “just moving a dot.”
GOV.UK is widely considered one of the best examples of public service design in the world. It’s a global benchmark for clarity, consistency and trust. If you’re going to update that brand, you should be spending time and money doing it properly. Whether it was the right call is up for debate. But you won’t find the answer in a headline.
But where you will find the right answer is here, the full breakdown from the GDS team is well worth a read: How we refreshed the Government Digital Service brand and what we’re doing differently
Perspective matters. Especially when you’re dealing with national infrastructure, not profile pictures.
American Eagle launches campaign with Sydney Sweeney
The sensationalist headline:
Insiders reveal REAL impact of Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle ad after it was compared to ‘Nazi propaganda’
What actually happened?
American Eagle launched a new campaign featuring actress Sydney Sweeney, built around a visual pun on the words “jeans” and “genes”, positioning Sweeney as both a fashion ambassador and someone whose appearance aligned with the brand’s creative concept. However, this messaging sparked backlash online. Some viewers interpreted the reference to “good genes” alongside a white, blonde, blue-eyed actress as reinforcing narrow beauty standards, while others drew more pointed comparisons to historical rhetoric around genetic superiority.
There are arguments for both sides and we’re not going to pick sides here, this is The Cold Take, this is looking at what happened as neutrally as possible and talking about the business impact.
American Eagle hasn’t really made any waves for a number of years, in the last 15 years, whilst the stock has had peaks and troughs, it’s pretty much stayed static. However, to sign-up Sydney Sweeney, arguably one of the biggest stars in the world right now is, everything aside, impressive and no doubt, hellish expensive.
And the effect? In summary, the words have spoken louder than the actions on this occasion. Whilst the online backlash has been astronomic, a recent study by Kantar of 10,000 Americans found that:
“The majority of men (62%) and half of women (50%) said they were very or somewhat likely to consider American Eagle in the future after seeing, hearing or reading about this ad campaign, even if they don’t typically wear the brand or style of clothing. Just 15% of men and 25% of women said it made them unlikely to consider the brand.”
Where they did see some backlash is that in-store footfall had dropped following the week the adverts aired, nationwide store visits were down 3.9%. Yet the sentiment and propensity to buy is still in favour.
What does this mean? Likely that the initial online backlash has created a ripple effect across consumers and I’d be willing to bet my non-American Eagle jeans that overall footfall will not only rebound, it will spike.
As for the finances, in the time that it came out, stock jumped around 20% and search interest (per Google Trends) rose 500%.
That said, search demand is resetting, and by the end of this month (August 2025) I expect it will be sitting comfortably back at its baseline. The problem for American Eagle, is that because the marketing has divided so many people, it’s highly unlikely they’ll continue with Sydney Sweeney in advertising in the immediate future. They’ve already pulled a few bits of content that received the worst amount of backlash, and I don’t believe for one second that they just had this single campaign in mind. You don’t sign one of the biggest stars of the moment for a one-off. This was probably meant to be like Beckham and Adidas, or George Clooney and Nespresso: long-term, high-visibility brand ambassadorships. But I think this will make the C-suite too nervous to continue, in this humble marketer’s opinion.
Time will tell, but as it stands the numbers say this:
- a short 20% jump in stock that’s already reverted back to the baseline
- a 5x increase in search demand that will reset in a few weeks
- brand sentiment is still positive across all demographics
- in-store footfall drop at just under 4%
And, as is the way of the world, we’ll have something else to worry about in a few weeks.
As a marketing campaign, will it provide an ROI? I think it will be too tight to call. I’ll be clear: when the dust settles I don’t think it will have had a remarkable affect on the company in either direction. This campaign would have cost millions and any positive effect for the company will be too short-lived to cover the outlay and the topic is putting them in far too much hot water to continue the partnership any time soon.
Jet2’s jingle resurfaces across global TikTok trend
The sensationalist headline:
A PR dream or disaster? Jet2’s holiday advert finds new life as joke meme
What actually happened?
And last but not least, nothing beats a Jet2 Holiday 🎵
A few weeks ago, I was obsessed with this viral trend, watching drunk Brits abroad get into fights in an Ibiza swimming pool or somebody being dragged off a budget US flight that makes a Ryanair flight to Alicante look like Singapore Airlines, whilst Jess Glynne played melodically in the background. It was hilarious. However, roughly six weeks later, I appreciate this song as much as I’d like Umbrella by Rihanna to sit in the UK charts for another year.
Now, on the opinion-based side, many of you will look at this trend and think “well, it’s a disaster, I’ll never book a Jet2 holiday” because of the negative affiliation. But, you’re not Jet2’s target market… and if you are… I’ve got my target audience very, very wrong. The Jet2 target market that see these trends will not be remotely affected by the content that’s associated with this audio. Source: trust me.
But, the important marketing lesson here, is the audio. Sonic devices are one of the most consistently overlooked brand codes in marketing, yet it drives the highest amount of fluency (continues below):
Think; “Autoglass repair, Autoglass replace“, or “Baba, ba, ba, baaa, I’m lovin’ it” or “Washing machines live longer with Calgon!“. Can you hear them? Are they stuck in your head now? Sorry, but I just wanted to make my point.
But back to Jet2. This is virality of the unicorn kind that only marketers can dream of and any perceived negative effects will, I’m sure, be nullified. Search interest has grown 4 or 5 times over the past few months and the brand has received billions and billions of earned impressions all over the globe.
Whilst Jet2 has reported strong growth and profits, this is for the financial year ended March 2025 and, aside from TikTok views, there aren’t any credible figures out in the wild as of yet.
One important takeaway here is how carefully Jet2 has embraced and steered the narrative. What began as the ironic soundtrack to videos of chavs fighting in Ibiza has morphed into the sound of the summer, thanks to Jet2 leaning into positive user-generated content, rewarding audience participation and even speaking out against the US government’s use of the audio in ICE deportation videos.
If there’s one thread running through all of this, it’s the importance of keeping a level head. Marketing lives in the public eye and everybody’s a critic, so it’s always going to attract knee-jerk reactions and polarised opinions. But whether it’s a government rebrand, a celebrity-led campaign or an unexpected TikTok trend, the same rules apply: step back, look at the bigger picture and focus on what the data actually tells you.
Good marketing is built on clear objectives, strategic thinking and an understanding of how people behave before, during & after. That’s why measurement matters at all times and that’s why brand equity takes years to build.
This series exists to cut through the endless “hot takes” with sensationalist spins and present you with facts and context.
Got something you want dissected next month? Ping me an email and I’ll add it to the list.