A Response to "Abercrombie & Fitch"

My first exposure to Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) came during my freshman or sophomore year at Wheaton College.  Apparently, that year, a Wheaton College student was chosen to be an ANF model, raising a question of whether it is "biblical" for a Christian to participate in a photo shoot for a company whose marketing employed suggestive sexual themes.  The individual in question responded that he made a deal with ANF such that they would not take full-bodied pictures of him, but only above the waist-line.  I never quite understood that justification, but it assuaged his guilt.  After all, he did get paid handsomely (no pun intended) for the job.  So it goes.

In 2006, ANF's CEO, Mike Jeffries, has gotten flack for making public ANF's marketing strategy.  It surprises me because I thought it was quite obvious, but apparently not.  He said in an interview that

... That's why we hire good-looking people in our stores, because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people.  We don't market to anyone other than that.

In response to another question, he notes that

In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids.  Candidly, we go after the cool kids.  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.  Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla.  You don't alienate anybody, but you don't excite anybody, either.

From a purely business point of view, Jeffries is quite prescient.  Indeed, he is right and had the foresight to tap into what seems to be axiomatic in Marketing today: sex sells.  This strategy has been exploited by many a brand for several decades now.  ANF is, perhaps, unique in that it employs it with gusto and targets it at the teenage/20s demographic.  And it has paid off handsomely.  Plus, his strategy works because it exists in so many forms outside of clothing.

Consider the hawker stand in Singapore.  The trick to finding the best mee boh, Hainanese Chicken Rice, char kway teow, or other delicious delicacies is to find the stand with the longest lines.  But, as I have mused with my brothers before, what if we mathematize it in a game-theoretic way?  So, let us suppose there are two mee boh stands with the same quality of noodles.  It's 7:00 am, and nobody's here.  But one person comes in and just decides for no reason to order from Stand A.  If everybody who patronizes the food court that day chooses the stand with the longer line, then Stand A will win, because the next person who comes in will see that Stand A has a longer line (1 person) than Stand B, and the pattern goes on.  And these people will enjoy good mee boh and tell their friends about how good it is, and before long, one of those friends tells Anthony Bourdain about it, and Stand A becomes reputed as the place to get good mee boh when, in reality, it is no different than Stand B.  The trick, then, is how to get that first person to line up at 7:00 am in the morning.

ANF's strategy is painfully similar.  How do you distinguish yourself from Aeropostale if your products are essentially the same?  One way - this is Uniqlo and Under Armour's strategy - is to accentuate the product differences.  My product, unlike the Competitor's, has "technology" that makes you feel good wearing it!  Less sexy?  Yes.  But it works, although you target a more specialized demographic who can benefit from that "technology."

The other way - and ANF, Victoria's Secret, Apple, Harvard University, etc. utilize this - is to get at savoir faire.  It tickles your erotic senses.  This usually requires creating a mystique, if you will, that surrounds a company.  Apple, for example, is connected with sleek, cool and advanced gadgetry.  Harvard is connected with academic elitism and with better networks to the halls of wealth and power.  All this, by the way, is eros - there is something about that company with which you would enjoy an association.  For Harvard, you have to be admitted.  For Apple, ANF, etc., you just have to purchase one of their products, usually at a premium.  So ANF needs to create a different mystique that would appeal to their target group.  Mike Jeffries has correctly ascertained that teens and young adults want to be seen as "cool" and "good-looking." (Indeed, I think he's right.)  And if ANF can lodge itself into that consumerist space whereby purchasing ANF is a direct signifier of "cool" and "good-looking," it'll work.

So ANF does not make plus-sized clothing; if it does, it risks diluting its market with the "uncool" kids. Before we go up in arms about this, let's be clear that Harvard and other universities and companies do the same.  If Harvard accepted all its applicants, it risks counting among its alumni those who will end up working as clerks in some nondescript company.  If it were selective like it is now, it can afford creating class after class of people who would most likely end up as leaders in government, business, etc.  Consistency requires that if we condemn ANF for their exclusionary strategies, we must also condemn Harvard, Apple, etc., for their exclusionary strategies as well.

Nonetheless, Christians are up in arms about this.  But I don't think they're up in arms about the right stuff.  Many, of course, rail at the ANF catalogs, all of which are practically should be considered, conservatively, soft pornography.  But catalogs don't just drop out of the sky!  I've not received one catalog from any company because I don't give any groups my mailing address when I purchase clothes!  I don't shop for clothes often enough to use discounts, anyways.  If Christian parents are so concerned about their kids receiving soft pornography in the mail, why not tell them to not give the home mailing address to the cashier?  (Yes, parents, you have the right to demand your kid not give away your home's mailing address...)  Plus, if ANF is such a anathema, why continue to shop there?

And therein lies the key to the issue.  ANF has the right to be exclusionary.  Why must one shop at ANF?  I am, for instance, outside of ANF's ideal demographic (I'm Asian, overweight, and above 25.) But what I can do is go over to some Outlet Mall and buy from Levi's or some "uncool" brand.  The uproar, from what I could gather, seems to be that "I want to buy ANF, but they won't cater to my tastes and preferences."  My response: why must you buy ANF if they won't cater to your tastes and preferences?  I would love to buy a 100-room mansion in the Hamptons for $50,000 (that is, for example, my preference.)  But the realtors won't cater to those preferences.  So I will buy an apartment in Newark for that price, instead!  I mean, that's how economics works.  Deal with it!  There is no moral argument here.

What Christians should be in arms with is that "cool" and "good-looking" are signifiers of self-worth, and, to "up the ante," that these signifiers can be tied into something as vacuous as a name, such as ANF.  We live in such a commercialized world that brand names matter more than content - and that, in turn, is because we think brand names translate into content.  At the heart of easy labeling - such as "liberal" or "conservative" or "evangelical" strands of Christianity - is this tendency to brand-name.  Why am I evangelical?  Because I'm biblical? No - there are liberals and conservatives who are biblical.  Because I'm Christocentric?  There are Christocentric Christians who would flee from the Evangelical label.  I wonder if we're evangelical because evangelicalism is a "theological brand-name."

I am no fan of ANF, and frankly speaking, in a benevolent and totalitarian society, I would classify them as "risky to children" for marketing over-sexualized products and imaginaries to them.  But we don't live in a benevolent dictatorship under the aegis of Jesus Christ.  Indeed, in a capitalist democracy, ANF's ethics range from "great business model" to "profitable."  If we can bring the ethical discussion to focus on the location of "cool" (or, even, the definition of "coolness"), we may head somewhere.  But if we hate on ANF for being a perfect member of a free market economy, and to do that on a Christian basis, we may be barking up the wrong ethical tree.