Surely everyone saw this coming?

Sydney Sweeney is at the centre of another advertising backlash,  and this time, I’m struggling to believe nobody saw it coming.

Her latest campaign, for sports prediction platform Novig, features Sweeney posing almost nude, using strategically placed sporting equipment to cover herself.

It has, predictably, caused controversy. Female athletes have criticised the campaign for sexualising women in sport, social media is debating it, and media outlets are now covering the backlash.

But from a PR perspective, surely this was the point? I’d never heard of Novig until this week, and now you can’t miss it. One analysis even found mentions of the brand have increased by more than 1,000%, so I can’t be the only one.

Sydney’s “great jeans” campaign for American Eagle became one of the most talked-about campaigns of 2025, generating huge amounts of coverage, criticism, and online debate. So if you choose Sydney Sweeney, put her in another deliberately provocative campaign, and then release it into the world, surely you know what’s going to happen?

Particularly when Sweeney isn't simply the face of Novig. She’s an investor and strategic partner in the business and reportedly had significant input into the campaign itself.

That makes it difficult to see the controversy as an unexpected PR problem. Instead, it looks increasingly like controversy is the media strategy. Well, there’s no such thing as bad PR, as they say. 

Novig was a relatively unknown brand competing in an incredibly crowded market. Now it has been discussed across national media, social platforms, and the sporting world. 

Athletes, who would usually command thousands of dollars for a social post, are reacting to the brand by posting videos, being interviewed, and sharing their opinion online. These reactions are becoming news stories in themselves, and suddenly, one advert has produced several waves of earned media.

It's risky PR, because attention and positive reputation aren't the same thing. But for a challenger brand starting with very little awareness, perhaps being disliked by some people is more valuable than being completely unknown.

After the reaction to American Eagle, nobody involved in this campaign could reasonably have expected Sydney Sweeney posing almost naked with sports equipment to quietly pass everyone by.

Which makes me think they didn't fail to learn from the American Eagle controversy.

They may have learned exactly how powerful it was.