e.l.f. Beauty CMO Kory Marchisotto on betting on women’s love for live sports

Chief Marketing Officer Kory Marchisotto joins The Current Podcast to discuss why the makeup brand e.l.f. Beauty decided to air a Super Bowl ad, and why other female-driven brands are missing out.

Episode Transcript

Please note, this transcript may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio.

[00:00:00] Damian: I'm Damian Fowler.

[00:00:01] Ilyse: And I'm Ilyse Liffreing

[00:00:02] Damian: welcome to this edition of The Current Podcast.

[00:00:05] Ilyse: This week, we're delighted to talk with Kory Marchisotto, the Chief Marketing Officer at e.l.f. Beauty.

[00:00:11] Damian: Now maybe I'm the only one here, but I didn't realize that the word elf stands for eyes, lips and face. The brand was launched in 2004 and it filled a gap in the marketplace for inexpensive, high quality cosmetics.

[00:00:26] Ilyse: Twenty years later, and e.l.f. has become a powerhouse brand. It went public in 2016, and since then has seen spectacular growth. Its sales soared last year, driven by retail channels and some seriously buzzy marketing.

[00:00:42] Damian: We started by asking Kory, what gives the e.l.f. brand the edge in this very competitive marketplace?

[00:00:50] Damian: So Kory, how do you think of the e.l.f. brand in this very competitive field? And what's your competitive advantage as it were?

[00:00:58] Kory: I like to think about [00:01:00] e.l.f. as a brand of the people, by the people, for the people, created with the people. And for that to be true, we need to be totally in tune and have our finger on the pulse of what the people want, what they like, what are their unique needs, wants, and desires. So we really think about ourselves as stewards of our community's vision of e.l.f.

[00:01:22] And that's a very unique place to be standing. How much value and emphasis we put on that community. They're, citizens of the brand. They have a vote, they have a seat at every table, and that is by definition, a very unique competitive advantage.,

[00:01:41] Damian: speaking of competitive advantage, you've had tremendous, stupendous growth over the last five years. And I'm just curious to hear from you, what is supercharging this?

[00:01:51] Kory: Over the last five years, we've grown our stock price. 1, 567 percent to be exact, [00:02:00] making us the number one performing stock on the New York Stock Exchange out of 1, 600. and 15 companies. So I think that definitely deserves your tremendous stupendous.

[00:02:11] Damian: Okay, that's good. That's good. And what do you think, if you had to put your finger on two or three factors, what is it that is driving this upward, curve, as it were?

[00:02:24] Kory: There's quite a few things and in the essence of time, I'll distill it to the three I think are most important. But for your audience, I think it's really important to go back to the beginning to understand the ethos of the brand, because it's the ethos that powers the purpose that powers the people, That power the performance.

[00:02:42] So if you go back to the origins of elf in 2004, let's remember at this time Facebook hadn't launched yet. iPhones don't exist. Imagine this. Can you wrap your heads around that?

[00:02:56] And So so we're back in the dark ages folks [00:03:00] and our founders dreamt up the impossible and made it happen. So they had this crazy idea that they could create premium quality cosmetics And sell it for one dollar over the internet.

[00:03:13] So everybody told them, first and foremost, you cannot create premium quality cosmetics and sell it for a dollar. That's impossible. Second, you certainly can't sell color cosmetics over the internet. And third, even if you figure it out how to do number one and number two, you'll never make this a profitable business.

[00:03:30] And aren't we glad that our founders disrupted from day one. So they have this renegade spirit, this bias for action, this quest to do the impossible.

[00:03:42] One is our core value proposition, our very unique ability to deliver premium quality cosmetics at a jaw dropping value. The second is our powerhouse innovation,

[00:03:55] And then the third is our disruptive marketing engine.

[00:03:58] So our core value, [00:04:00] proposition, our powerhouse innovation and our disruptive marketing engine are definitely the drivers of our last 20 consecutive quarters of growth.

[00:04:08]

[00:04:09] Ilyse: I'm curious about your out of box marketing because you guys are known for that. You really are. how did you cultivate this approach when you came on board as cMO?

[00:04:20] Kory: at that time, there were some major shifts happening in the company.

[00:04:25] So, Every company goes through various stages of growth, especially in a 20 year history. And the stage that I had walked into was a transformation from investing in...