At Label Networks, our marketing intelligence and research studies often include information for brands and advertisers about ways to attract key segments of global youth culture markets. One of those principals is to apply humor to ad and branding campaigns—especially if the brand is a large, well-known company.  

Abercrombie & Fitch, the American youth fashion brand that often ranks high within our top brand rankings in our North American Youth Culture Consumer Research Studies, attempted to include so-called humorous slogans on their recent crop of girls T-shirts, but too many girls that the shirts were targeted for, didn’t find them funny. As reported by the AP November 6, Abercrombie’s T-shirt statements such as “Who needs brains when you have these?” and “I make you look fat,” backfired. Instead of coming off as ironic and funny, they basically pissed off their target market, resulting in a girl-cott of the brand in several locations.

In response, last week Abercrombie & Fitch announced that they would pull the girl slogan T-shirts from their line. This incident is among a string of controversy Abercrombie has dealt with in the past few years, including when they had to pull their catalogs featuring nude young people in 2002, and when then discontinued a line of T-shirts that Asian-Americans thought racially insensitive.