The 29-year-old actress is the star of the new campaign for Novig, an American sports prediction marketplace. The concept behind the advert is almost disarmingly simple: Sydney Sweeney appears naked or scantily clad, with various items of sports kit strategically concealing her body. Balls, a racket, a hockey stick and a basketball hoop thus become props in an advert that no one could claim is subtle.
And, of course, it’s working. Not necessarily in the moral sense of the word, but in an advertising sense: everyone’s talking about it.
The campaign quickly sparked outrage amongst many female athletes. Former Australian Olympic swimming champion Ariarne Titmus, a four-time Olympic gold medallist, in particular spoke out against an advert she considers to be yet another instance of the sexualisation of women in sport. Other athletes responded by posting their own images of themselves training and competing, based on a simple idea: this is what a woman in sport really looks like.
The criticism is understandable. After decades spent fighting for greater media recognition for their performances, some female athletes are now faced with a massive campaign in which the relationship between a woman and sport is once again reduced essentially to her body.
But the story becomes more interesting when you realise that Sydney Sweeney isn’t simply an actress who cashed a big cheque before heading home.
She is also a strategic partner and shareholder in Novig. In other words, she has a financial stake in the company she is promoting.
And that changes our perspective on her somewhat. Sydney Sweeney is not merely the subject of this advert: she is participating in a commercial venture from which she stands to benefit directly.
The real question then becomes: is she a victim of sexualisation in advertising, or is she consciously using her own image as a powerful economic tool?
It’s probably much more the latter than we’d sometimes like to admit.
Because the strategy works remarkably well in terms of visibility. According to Business Insider, mentions of Novig on social media increased ninefold following the campaign. The company, founded in 2021, had also just raised $75 million at a reported valuation of $500 million.
There is, however, one detail that is far less flattering for the advertisers: an analysis of online conversations suggests that only 4 per cent of the discussions sparked by the campaign actually mentioned Novig. So, many people remembered Sydney Sweeney naked. Far fewer remembered what she was selling.
That is the crux of the ambiguity in this advert.
One could perfectly well find the campaign vulgar, lazy, regressive or sexist. One might also argue that an adult woman has every right to use her body and her power of attraction as she sees fit, especially when she is not merely a model for the brand but has a financial stake in the company.
The two ideas are, in fact, not incompatible.
Sydney Sweeney now has a firm grasp on something particularly valuable in our digital economy: attention. She knows that her image simultaneously triggers desire, outrage, feminist debates, press articles, furious comments and millions of views. Those who adore her share her photos. Those who hate her share them too.
For Novig, the immediate result is the same.
One might regret this dynamic. But it would be difficult to claim that it doesn’t work.
And ultimately, the Novig campaign perhaps says less about Sydney Sweeney than it does about ourselves. An actress takes her clothes off with a basketball and, a few hours later, the world is debating feminism, sport, capitalism, advertising and women’s bodies.
Meanwhile, a small company that almost nobody had heard of has just benefited from a global campaign.
Sydney Sweeney may well have taken her clothes off.
Novig, for its part, had calculated everything perfectly.
