American Apparel a marketing genius?

Even by the standards of today's sex-as-marketing culture, American Apparel's ads stand out. Their images intentionally resembling 1970s porn, with men and women appearing incredibly young or perhaps caught by surprise in the privacy of a bedroom, the ads seem to offer a subversive alternative to the usual plastic, airbrushed hot-babe ad - while still selling sex - and of course t-shirts. But the strangest visual disorientation comes in the advertisement's upper left-hand corner where a sober font reads: "American Apparel: Vertically Integrated Manufacturing."

"Vertical integration" is an economic term referring to a business that encompasses all aspects of producing and selling a product; and in today's globalised economy, companies that both self-manufacture and retail are increasingly rare. Presumably, to most hip consumers who are not economists these words on American Apparel's billboard are just another anachronism in an already edgy ad. But American Apparel is adamant about communicating their economic structure ("Made in Downtown LA") that competitors such as Hanes or Levi's aren't able to share.

There aren't many other clothing company mixing trashy sex and manufacturing information in its ads. Like everything else about its business, American Apparel's marketing showcases the bizarre contradictions of postmodern consumer capitalism. The company possesses a downtown textile factory straight out of the '40s, a sexploitation ad campaign from the '70s, and a marketing strategy so sophisticated it almost seems to come from the future.

Everything about American Apparel is geared to appeal to the ideal trend-starting shoppers Dov Charney, the company's founder, calls "young metropolitan adults" - including the company's sweatshop-free manufacturing ethic. The widespread misgivings by left-leaning young people that everyday commodities like coffee, clothing, and oil are inextricably linked with global exploitation has created a huge potential consumer market among the very "early adopters" all marketers love to pander to. Like the current RED campaign, American Apparel has hit a niche market with a message about its business ethics - and it is profiting immensely from its approach.