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How Gen Z favorite E.l.f. cosmetics became an entertainment powerhouse

E.l.f.’s affordable, fair-trade beauty products are winning over customers, while its innovative campaigns, partnerships, and platform launches are accomplishing something rarer: attracting a following.

How Gen Z favorite E.l.f. cosmetics became an entertainment powerhouse
[Photo: Ryan Segedi; prop stylist: Michael Younker]

BY Jill Bernstein2 minute read

E.l.f. is No. 26 on Fast Company’s list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2023. Explore the full list of companies that are reshaping industries and culture.

E.l.f. (which stands for “eyes, lips, face”) may sit beside L’Oréal and Revlon on shelves at Walgreens, Ulta, and Target, but its leaders also view it as an entertainment company, servicing a huge audience of followers across its social platforms. “When you have 14 million people showing up on your doorstep every day,” says CMO Kory Marchisotto, “you can’t just sell them a product, you have to entertain them.”

Known for its affordable, fair-trade products and beloved “dupes” of high-end items, E.l.f. began partnering three years ago with marketer Movers+Shakers on inventive digital work that went viral. Its 2019 #eyeslipsface campaign, with original music by Grammy-winning producer Ill Wayno and featuring Holla FyeSixWun, garnered 7 billion views. It attracted the most user-generated videos ever at the time for a TikTok brand campaign and marked the first time that a brand held the No. 1 trend spot on the platform—and the song reached No. 4 on Spotify’s Global Viral charts. Today, E.l.f. is supercharging that strategy via user-generated content. It debuted a short film last winter made of user videos, drawing more than 400 million impressions, and used a TikTok talent search to help Simon Fuller select makeup artists for his pop group The Future X. (The four winners of that #elfitup challenge—Morgan Tanner, Caleb Harris, Aditi Harish, and Markphong Tram—now tour with the musical collective and create stage looks using E.l.f. products.) E.l.f. also taps a range of influencers: In December, Meghan Trainor filmed a “radiance report” with the Weather Channel to promote E.l.f.’s restocking of its breakout 2022 product, the $14 Halo Glow Liquid Filter (a knockoff of the $46 Charlotte Tilbury Hollywood Flawless Filter). It garnered a mind-boggling 5 billion impressions. Meanwhile, E.l.f. has been developing other creative ways to delight consumers, from linking with Dunkin’ to develop a limited edition glazed donut-inspired makeup and skincare collection to hiring a “glow plow” to hit the streets of New York City last December and deliver the brand’s holiday collection.

E.l.f. is experimenting with other platforms: A 2020 relationship with gamer Loserfruit led E.l.f. to launch the beauty industry’s first Twitch channel. Last year, the company followed up with a gamer-focused product line called Game Up. E.l.f. also became the first beauty brand on BeReal. And in February, the company debuted a cheeky Super Bowl ad, starring Jennifer Coolidge and filmed by her White Lotus director Mike White.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jill Bernstein is the editorial director at Fast Company, where she oversees coverage of innovation across all sectors of business, including tech, retail, leadership, policy, and entertainment. She has a special fondness for very creative people More


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