When it comes to marketing, E.l.f. is no one-hit wonder.
Sure, the company almost single-handedly ushered in the TikTok age and sparked a generational shift in marketing back in 2019 when it created an original song for TikTok called “Eyes.Lips.Face.”
But over the last five years, it has proven itself adept at experimenting and executing across the entire media spectrum — from gaming (see Twitch) to the biggest game of all (hello Super Bowl), driving its business to historic highs and setting a new standard in engaging for beauty and beyond.
While many of its campaigns push boundaries, the intent is never to provoke for shock value alone.
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Take E.l.f.’s most recent campaign, So Many Dicks, created to highlight the fact that there are more men named Richard, Rich and Rick on corporate boards of directors than entire groups of underrepresented people. Equity and inclusivity are core values of E.l.f., and with So Many Dicks, the company, one of only four U.S. corporate boards that is two-thirds women and one-third diverse, is hoping to create a groundswell of change that will improve the composition in corporate America.
That lofty ambition doesn’t just stem from E.l.f.’s own desire to change the world. It’s a direct result of hearing what its customers care about.
“We listened very deeply to how people were responding to the 1-in-4 statistic,” said Kory Marchisotto, chief marketing officer of E.l.f. Beauty. “When you turn into people’s reactions, when you are really listening deeply for emotions, emojis and what’s under the hood, then you can bring those signals to the forefront in deeply meaningful ways.”
Within a month of launching, So Many Dicks had become E.l.f.’s most viral campaign ever, garnering 98 percent positive sentiment. “The signals from that campaign are telling us to lean in further,” she said.
Marchisotto, an avid Trekkie, considers it her primary job to seek out and action such signals, wherever they may come from. An early riser, she usually starts her day around 6 a.m. with a fast workout and then a check of key digital platforms to see what the community is saying. “We’re very good at separating the noise from signals. And today there is a lot of noise,” she said. “We like to connect the signals into what I call constellation making. Once you make the constellation where you have enough stars shining bright that connect, then you bring your feet to the ground and make it happen at speed.”
That agility has become the envy of other companies. “One thing that E.l.f. is really freaking good at is understanding their audience, their fans, their community,” said Armando Potter, head of strategy at 72andSunny, the creative agency whose clients include TacoBell, Google and E.l.f. “E.l.f. speaks the language of their fans in a way most brands can’t understand.
“E.l.f. understands their brand is bigger than advertising when it comes to communication,” he continued. “A lot of times brands rely on commercials, out of home, billboards, social, but every move E.l.f. makes is a bigger behavior…The conversations, the partnerships like the ones with Liquid Death or Chipotle, the things that don’t look like advertising are what make E.l.f. stand out from other brands.”
Marchisotto describes E.l.f.’s approach as “kinetic marketing,” i.e. always in motion. To her, speed matters, as does quantity. Mistakes — not so much. Progress is the goal, rather than perfection. It’s the opposite of many companies, she says, where months, even more, can be spent investigating an idea, getting buy-in, executing it, then analyzing the results.
“By that time, we’ve already done 10 campaigns,” Marchisotto said, “and we have the signals coming at us rapid fire, training our algorithm to give us the signals that allow us to already birth the next campaign.”
That’s how the bestselling product Power Grip Primer was born, for example. It came out of community feedback about Jelly Pop Dew Primer. People loved the product’s stickiness, but not its watermelon scent. The result: Power Grip, a similar formula without the scent, which became a hero for E.l.f. and begat its first-ever Super Bowl commercial starring Jennifer Coolidge.
Its recent sponsorship of professional race car driver Katherine Legge in the Indy 500, the first time a beauty brand has been affiliated with the event, also happened quickly — in less than six months.
“In the 108-year history of this race, there has never been a brand talking to women,” said Marchisotto. “The key signal for us is serving the underserved — underserved in terms of women on the track, but more importantly, women underserved in the stadium.”
For Marchisotto, product and campaign are two key buckets with partnerships and collaborations being the third. In the quest to become ever closer with the community so the brand can better meet the needs of its members, those elements are all table stakes.
“Product is baseline and will get you the transaction. It’s the starting point,” she said. “What’s harder is ideology. Gen Z and Alphas have so many choices — there are so many products, so many brands. They’re saying ‘I want to vote with my wallet, and in order for me to vote, I need to understand who are the people behind this brand? What are their values? That is a badge I’m wearing when I use E.l.f. products.’”
Marchisotto saw this come to life during a recent Twitch live stream, which she cohosted with chief financial officer Mandy Fields to talk about So Many Dicks. It drew more than 13,000 attendees. What surprised her, though, was not the number of attendees. Instead, the “aha” moment was what they wanted to talk about.
“They’re craving education and career advice — they asked us about our journeys. What advice do we have for them? What is a board of directors?” Marchisotto recalled. “That was pretty incredible and not something I was expecting at that moment.”
That level of closeness exists between E.l.f. and its community and the individual members of the C-suite. “There is no distance between our C-suite and our community. Zero,” said Marchisotto. “[CEO] Tarang [Amin] goes live on TikTok himself. There is no ivory tower.
“The power of E.l.f. has always been in the hands of the community. We’re here to steward and steer the ship,” she continued. “There is zero distance between insight and action. In a lot of companies, insight is in a center of excellence that is far removed from the business. Here, we learn something on Tuesday and it’s actioned on Wednesday.”
If this all sounds very intentional, it’s because it is. Amin, Marchisotto and the company’s other leaders may be industry veterans with experience at some of the largest companies in beauty. But the secret to their success lies in forgetting preconceived notions forged by previous successes.
Each year, every member of the team chooses an intention word for the year, and everyone has an accountability partner to make sure they are living up to it.
Marchisotto’s word this year is shoshin, a Zen Buddhist terms that means “beginner’s mind.”
“My intention for this year is to always look at everything with fresh eyes and not let knowledge or experience stand in the way of exploration and experimentation,” she said. “I think back about that first campaign on TikTok. We didn’t come in with any preconceived notion of what or how it should be. Same with Roblox. What did we know about creating a game?” Marchisotto continued.
“That beginner’s mindset is fundamental to our success.”