I finally figured out American Apparel

On a certain level, as a marketer, I have to admire anything that works. In that regard, the thematic choices made by the marketers at American Apparel are worthy of praise. They have catapulted their brand into recognizability, re-activated a controversial dialogue about the relationship between advertising and sex, and placed themselves dead-center. Bravo. Not since a 14-year old Brooke Shields told us that nothing comes between her and her Calvin Klein’s, has the p-word been brandished with such vigor.

But it wasn’t until I visited the American Apparel website that I truly appreciated their achievement in its bigger picture. American Apparel is not just the most recent in a long line of companies that have sensationalized their products with underage girls. That’s been done to death. What I realized when I visited the website, what I realized when I went back to the copy of the Guardian that’s tucked among a stack of magazines we keep in the bathroom (which also includes Brand Week, Wired, 7×7, Men’s Journal, Creativity, Vice and International Watch among others) and looked at the full page ad there, what I realized then is that American Apparel is not a clothing company. American Apparel is a publisher of photography that monetizes via sales of apparel. That seems a lot less twisted and makes a lot more sense when you consider that model in the context of the web. Content >> Views >> Sales.