American Apparel’s advertising alchemy

Ever since the store opened in July, our campus has been absolutely plastered with ads from American Apparel, a store that sells a label-less product with a colour selection that rivals Pantone. Their outerwear truly is of great quality; their underwear I don’t own, so I can’t really judge it. What started as a company offering a sweatshop-free alternative for screenprinters needing blank slates for their designs opened retail stores that sell the same blank slate product. How does one even begin to sell a vertical-market product to the public in a high-end area? Why do people buy their stuff? It’s not so much the product selling itself. In fact, I’ll base American Apparel’s success on absolutely nothing more than a low-end Canon Digital SLR, a Polaroid 600, and extremely liberal use of Helvetica. It is American Apparel’s marketing that is absolutely brilliant.

Skip all of the fancy vector images, typefaces, and patterns: American Apparel ads are the Lomography of marketing. Their sole graphical element is a simple photograph; their sole typeface is Helvetica.

A few months ago, I went with my sister to Royal Oak for a fashion photo shoot of hers. Her photographer, Jun Pino (whose photographic work has been used for countless magazines and fashion labels,) gave us a bit of insight into American Apparel’s photographic methods: 1. Grab Polaroid. 2. Point at boy or girl wearing American Apparel. 3. Push shutter button. The resulting image goes everywhere, barely edited, if at all. A dark-haired girl in a yellow shirt adorned the window of a Royal Oak store - with a pimple on her face. At the nearly seven-foot-tall size of the photo, the zit alone was probably the size of my hand. It was blatantly obvious from one photograph what American Apparel was doing. A fashion company with flawed models? This down-to-earth photography is then mated with the world’s most popular sans-serif to make an image that defines why the company continues to grow. It’s an image explained in four pieces.

The scenes, the typefaces, the clothes, and the people are all entirely ordinary

This reflects the company’s product beautifully. Their shirts are basic; only the most educated eye or touch will tell you that it came from American Apparel. Their photos are shot in ordinary locations with lots of simple lighting. I swear I sat next to the girl on this card in Starbucks a week ago.

It looks like the designer of the card pictured above wasn’t even trying. White background. Plain, almost default kerning and alignment on the Helvetica. As people, we can make an important psychological connection to this: we’re not models. We’re students, we’re designers, we’re musicians, investment bankers, yoga teachers, postal workers, journalists, and waitstaff. We work crappy hourly jobs and go home to our decidedly uneventful, lonely lives. We’re pretty damn ordinary, and our subconscious sighs in relief. Finally, some company highlights us for who we are. That is exactly our subconscious process, and this state of ordinary is appealing because we have something unabashedly in common with it.

American Apparel’s message is clear

It doesn’t get any simpler than Helvetica Neue 75 Bold. No goofy slogans or advertising memes à la Gap, just what the deal is. That is all that needs to be said here.

It’s casual

I don’t exactly have many days in the year when I can dress up in a suit and be attacked by journalists and the paparazzi (Okay, excluding working at the Daily.) I look kind of lame if I go to class in a dress shirt or sport coat. Armani shirts and 7 jeans have their place, and it’s definitely when I’m not in class. Wear anything at all to class other than UGGs, a North Face jacket, or Abercrombie and you are probably considered way-too-Manhattan for the homogenous sorority girls and Abercrombie-addicted frat pack. Either that or you’re gay.

This is where American Apparel’s marketing wins again: it’s basic. There’s no unnecessary branding. You aren’t tromping down the street in a shirt that reads American Apparel in their characteristic Helvetica; you can blend in and let solely your colour choice be your expressive outlet. (Note: If you get a compliment on your colour selection, don’t bring up complementary colour.)

Most importantly, it’s accessible

Let’s be honest here: American Apparel’s models aren’t worthy of a New York City runway in their photographed state. Period. Even with a hefty dose of MAC or an Adobe Healing Brush, they’d still look way out of place in a Versace ad.

Let’s be honest again, this time with ourselves: Unless you’re in my sister’s industry, you’re probably no supermodel, either. I’m most certainly not. Hell, the agencies I worked with eventually throttled my work off to radio voiceovers. The majority of us are awkward and physically flawed. Although my sister’s co-workers, all brilliantly hot, constantly preach the wonders of plastic surgery, there’s something philosophically, if not monetarily, impractical in turning yourself into a shell of silicone to retaliate against the shitty DNA you got when you were born. I’m a designer, not a model. I’m not beautiful. $60,000.00 later, I could be prettier, but I’d still not have solved half of my aesthetic issues in search of a perfect image. It’s also really not worth the recovery time.

The girl on this American Apparel card in front of me is most certainly no Rachel Alexander. Neither are the ones in the windows of the store half a block from my apartment. Regardless, this girl gives us insight into a rogue in an industry that spends very little time looking at who the majority of us are and what we look like. The girls in these Polaroids are beautiful for who they are in their most basic, non-Photoshop-assisted form. Hell, I’d actually have a chance with some of the girls in these photos. Okay, maybe five. Two.

This portrayal of accessibility is what I really believe is the keystone in American Apparel’s success, with all other parts of their marketing being auxiliary to this accessibility. Although American Apparel requires a photo submission with your employment application, as long as you aren’t morbidly obese or lacking hygiene, you’ll probably be accepted. American Apparel works so well because it makes anyone feel important and aesthetically content, if not supermodel-like. They make any photographer with a Lomo LC-A feel talented. They make any designer with simply Illustrator and the Helvetica family feel like the next Milton Glaser. They aren’t afraid to simply show people as people, with differing images and bodies. People like myself: some scrawny, 157-pound, 5′10″ designer with a big nose, writing in a Moleskine in a coffee shop. People like the girl in this ad: a Mediterranean-looking girl with wavy, coarse dark hair and eyebrows that really should see some paraffin wax. People like the girl a couple of tables down from me, who just dumped half of a mocha onto her beat-up Powerbook G4. Is that an American Apparel scarf that she’s soaking that mess up with? I think I should probably go help her clean up that mess.

Eston is probably too busy writing, drinking a mocha, or dreaming about American Apparel models. E-mail him and maybe he’ll respond once he’s run out of ink and Polaroid film.

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