Sydney Sweeney’s Syrn has already attracted controversy, but can it be a brand that lasts?

From her American Eagle ad that polarized audiences to her new lingerie brand, Syrn (as in “siren”), Sydney Sweeney has become something of a case study for a long-standing marketing question: Is all publicity ultimately good publicity?

For Syrn, the launch strategy leaned straight into attention. A fiery campaign rollout and a Hollywood Sign stunt once again split the internet. According to one marketing professor, whether that’s good or bad for business is…complicated.

“She’s such a presence right now, even starting from the American Eagle ad, she's already kind of this flashpoint figure,” Wendy Zajack, adjunct faculty at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, told Retail Brew. “So you could be like, ‘I hate her because of the American Eagle,’ or you love her because of the American Eagle, but no matter what, you’re talking about her. For a brand launch, that’s always a good thing. Controversy and craziness and all that kind of stuff is good for initial curiosity.”

Once the initial curiosity fades, however, even a celebrity-led brand needs to have a good product and an audience that buys into its messaging.

For Sweeney, the core messaging behind her DTC label that offers a wide range of sizes—44 bra sizes from 30B to 42DDD—is inclusivity with a relatively affordable price tag. Still, in a category long dominated by players like Victoria’s Secret (and increasingly crowded with influencer-founded upstarts), the question remains: Will it resonate once the launch buzz dies down?

“For [Sweeney]....it’s an interesting brand to go into, it kind of fits with her image, it leans into her sex appeal,” Zajack said. “But in the long term, it’s about how regular women feel about it. Does it make them feel sexy, special, comfortable, whatever they're looking for in their lingerie, underwear?”

Zajack also questioned whether the brand’s positioning differentiates Sweeney.

“It goes into the male buyer or the female buyer for lingerie, because we have both, but women, we’re the ones that keep buying it for ourselves; we’re the long-term buyer of it,” Zajack said. “It all does go back to the product—if she really does have something new with the sizing, and it’s not going to cut you a certain way, or it’s going to fit you in a unique way, that’s amazing, and then that will resonate. But if it isn’t really, and it’s just the same old, then it’s harder to really keep that brand going after the initial excitement about it.”

Citing the example of Kim Kardashian’s Skims or Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, which have both found long-term success, Zajack explained that for a celebrity brand to last, it needs to feel like a natural extension of the celebrity’s own personality or personal brand, supported by strong operators behind the scenes.

“These are hard businesses for anyone to make it in and so the other thing that I think about with these celebrities getting into these spaces is how interested are they in the business end, or do they have somebody really good that can kind of run them and keep them going?” she said. “Running your own fashion brand, it sounds fun, your makeup line, it sounds fun, lingerie line. And five years later, we see them getting out of those businesses, because that’s maybe not their core business.”

She added that Sweeney, like Kardashian, will ultimately need to find her niche and her people if the brand is to remain sustainable beyond initial curiosity partially fueled by controversial stunts.

And while controversy may be a good thing in the beginning, it also can ultimately backfire.

“We love celebrities that are kind of unhinged, right?” Zajack said. “But then they can also do and say things that can really hurt a brand at the same time….with celebrities like this, that are doing crazy stunts, it’s exciting and they’re interesting to watch, but we’ve certainly seen lots of them also go off the deep end and then become a liability for a brand.”