Veteran marketer defends controversial Sydney Sweeney jeans ad campaign: The publicity was 'worth billions'

Veteran marketer Mark Penn has no regrets about signing off on the viral Sydney Sweeney American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) jeans ad. "A campaign like that was worth billions of dollars, and so people don't understand … the power of marketing," the Stagwell (STGW) founder and CEO said in a new episode of the Power Players with Brian Sozzi podcast (video above; listen in below). Penn's firm worked with American Eagle to develop the ad. Over the course of four decades, Penn has served as a pollster for Bill Clinton, the CEO of PR outfit Burson-Marsteller, and the chief strategy officer at Microsoft (MSFT). He founded Stagwell in 2015, and the company now sports a market capitalization of more than $2 billion.