As was widely reported on August 16th, retailer Abercrombie & Fitch announced that it would pay Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino and the rest of the Jersey Shore cast to not wear its brand of clothing citing the association as “distressing” to fans of the clothing line.
Hitwise data shows that this announcement appears to have strengthened the connection between Abercrombie & Fitch and the cast of Jersey Shore. In fact, four of the top ten search terms containing “Situation” in the week ending August 20th included variations of “Abercrombie & Fitch”. Similarly, two of the top ten search terms containing “Abercrombie” included variations of the “Situation” during the same time period.

As a result of the retailer’s press release, News & Media, Business & Finance and Entertainment websites were far more likely to receive traffic from the search term “Abercrombie” during the week ending August 20th. The websites that saw the biggest boost in traffic from the search term “Abercrombie” include Reuters.com, Forbes.com and WSJ.com as compared with the previous week’s downstream traffic.

Overall, the announcement appears to have increased overall searches for both the retailer and ubiquitous reality show contestant. While recent searches for “Jersey Shore” peaked the week ending August 6th which corresponded with the Season 4 premiere, searches for both “Abercrombie” and “The Situation” reached a 12-week high the week ending August 20th following the anti-endorsement announcement. In fact, searches for both the “The Situation” and “Abercrombie” increased 28% and 25%, respectively, as compared with the previous week.

Thanks to Lauren Rice, Analyst with Custom Data & Insights Team for her analysis on this “situation”.