Coloring outside the lines with e.l.f. Beauty

Heather Stern: Brands are often taught to color within the lines, but as today’s guest says, if you want to instigate bold change, you need to take bold action. Named one of AdAge’s Leading Women of 2024 and Vogue Business’s 100 Innovators. Kory Marchisotto has taken e.l.f. Beauty to new heights as its Chief Marketing Officer or as her team and the TikTok community referred to as K-BO$$. Since joining the brand five years ago, she’s blown past industry benchmarks and broken records on new digital platforms, venturing outside her comfort zone while staying closely connected to her audience. The result? Brand awareness has doubled and a once modest marketing budget has grown to 25% of net sales. Not to mention e.l.f. becoming a billion-dollar brand. I’m so elfin excited to talk to Kory about her drive to disrupt and how the tension between head and the stars and feet on the ground became her universal truth. Welcome, Kory. 

Kory Marchisotto: Thank you. And that was quite an exceptional introduction. I might ask you to come on the road with me and do all of my introductions everywhere I go because that was truly exceptional. So thank you for that nod to me, more importantly, the team, and the incredible brand that we’ve been building for 20 years.

Heather: Sign me up. I’m with you on the road. I’ll also help test new products and learn as you’re learning from your community something we’re going to dig into. But first, what’s your most dropped e.l.f. bomb? And for those that don’t know, we know about the F-bomb, but the e.l.f. bomb is even better. Which one do you use a lot?

Kory: My favorite is why the e.l.f. not and e.l.f. the rules. And look at those, show you a little bit about the spirit of disruption. And the reason I love why the e.l.f. not so much is because most people ask why, we ask why the e.l.f. not. And that actually contributes to the speed at which we’re moving because we don’t infuse ourselves with all the doubt and all the reasons why we shouldn’t. Instead, we focus on all the reasons why we should. And e.l.f. the rules because of exactly what you just said: What lines, what boxes? Nobody said there was lines I needed a color inside of. So that one is a nod to our renegade spirit and our path of disruption. And if you give me a minute, I’d love to explain to you where those e.l.f. bombs came from.

Heather: I would love to hear that, and I love both of those and not just because obviously it’s a play and a pun, but as you said, it’s actually core to this ethos that you’re building and creating in not just the broader community, but your team and the industry. So yeah, let us know where does it come from?

Kory: So I joined this company five years ago and up until that point in time I was a New Yorker living in New York, and I moved across the country to San Francisco where the company headquarter[s] is sitting in Oakland. And as a true New Yorker, I might drop some F bombs maybe with more frequency than a typical San Francisco environment. And my boss, Tarang Amin, a couple of weeks into my journey at e.l.f. needed to go on a business trip and he asked me to host one of our town halls and we do a company-wide, all hands, every two weeks. And I was super excited as a newbie to come in and address the entire company and I might’ve dropped an F bomb on that town hall. There was a gasp in the San Francisco office and people were texting under the table, I’m like, what is going on here? In New York, this would be totally normal, right? So somebody came up to me after the meeting and said, “Hey, can I just give you a little feedback? Tarang doesn’t like cursing.” And I was like, whoa, how is this going to work out? So, we wound up being able to kill two birds with one stone, which is create a language that allows me to curse all day every day without a stare and turn our brand into a verb that becomes a language that not only we speak, but our entire community speaks. So, happy to say that both of those have been accomplished, and I can drop e.l.f. bombs all day every day and it’s no big deal.

Heather: I love it. I love it. I mean, I imagine when you think to that time, five years, what they say, ‘the days are long, the years are short,’ and I am sure, just thinking back to that moment and all the things that have happened and all that you’ve accomplished. Take me back to that time you had been working at LVMH and you spent 18 years at Shiseido, an amazing brand. What appealed to you to make the move, and tell me what it was like when you first showed up and how you navigated where you were going to focus on next?

Kory: It was really e.l.f.ing hard. So, for a lot of reasons. So, let me just go back to give your audience a little bit of context. I grew up in luxury beauty. So, I had spent at that point, 20 years of my life in the luxury sector working on very high end brands with everything from Burberry to Hermès to Issey Miyake, Jean Paul Gaultier. The list goes on. And I had always worked in the premium tier. So, a prior leader of mine had said to me that you should never change more than two things at one time. And here I am changing three things at one time, which is a massive amount of change. So, one is I was going from luxury to mass, which is a major change. Two, I was going from a big company to a small company. I was going from Shiseido to e.l.f., which at the time was 250 million in revenue. And three, I was moving from New York to California. That’s three massive changes.

Heather: Massive.

Kory: At the same time. So, good news is I am very comfortable in the uncomfortable and I have spent 20 years of my career at that time building a tolerance for risk and discomfort. So easier probably for me to do it than people who have not built this incredible tolerance around change. So much so that I find myself thriving in high change arenas. So, e.l.f. needed a massive change, and when I got the phone call from the recruiter at the time, she said to me, “I have three words for you. This position has been boiled down to three words to describe the individual that we are looking for. Bold change agent.”

Heather: Wow. You’re like, well, the conversation’s over, you found her.

Kory: So, of course, being a bold change agent, I’m aligned, my frequency was going off, but that’s not enough. Of course, I need to understand who is the brand, what is the potential and most importantly, who are the people behind the brand? And do I believe that we can make magic together?

Heather: Was e.l.f. even on your radar? 

Kory: I had, and it was on my radar for two different reasons. So a couple of years before I got the recruiter phone call, I was at the WWD, (which is women’s wear daily) CEO Summit, which is an extraordinary place to be. And some place, given the ticket price and the audience there, that you feel incredibly honored and privileged just to be in this environment. And I showed up bright-eyed and bushy tailed, I’m a forever student, so every room I walk into, I always have my notebook and my pen and I’m ready to be inspired and take notes. And this was one of those moments where I was just so humbled by the environment that I was in, and I found myself by the afternoon not taking any notes. And I remember looking down at my notebook saying, this is so not like me. Why am I so uninspired? Is it something about me? Is it something about what’s happening in this environment? 

And at that moment in time, a gentleman by the name of Tarang Amin, who I’d never heard of, took the stage and began delivering this presentation about e.l.f. and 10 pages of notes later. I looked over to my boss at the time who was still a mentor of mine, and I had worked with her for a very long time. So let’s just put that into context. And I whispered in her ear, Kathy, I hope you don’t mind, but at the end of his presentation I’m going to go give him my resume And she started laughing and looked back at me and said, “Do me a favor, give him mine too.”

Heather: Wow.

Kory: So, what was really fascinating is I had said to myself in that moment, make sure you go introduce yourself to this guy. And after he got off stage, of course there’s always people waiting to ask questions and have a conversation with you. And as things happen a couple of years later, I still had never met him and I get the phone call from the recruiter and when she talked to me about a bold change agent for e.l.f., my first question was, is Tarang Amin still the CEO?

Heather: Wow. And the answer was yes.

Kory: The answer was yes. 

Heather: So you got a conversation with him, I presume, as you were exploring this. And what was that like?

Kory: It was kindred spirits coming together on a common ground of understanding about what needed to be true. And he was definitely real in his plight for a bold change agent. And he outlined all the reasons for me why that’s what he was looking at for this moment in time. And what was really important for me was to be in an environment where my superpowers could be unleashed, and I could be in a position of thrive. And for your audience, my advice would always be for you to find a place where your antenna is completely aligned and the frequency is completely aligned with your kindred spiritism because that’s when you can be your best self and you’re invited to be your best self for exactly the superpowers you could bring to the table. 

So, it was an extraordinary moment of two people coming together who could see the future and we could see the possibilities and we could paint ourselves there together. It was like we got in a time machine, went five years out and then got back in the time machine, came to the present and said, okay, we got the roadmap.

Heather: Wow, that’s incredible. And just so funny how life works. I mean talk about bold, even if you were very close talking to your boss and being as honest as, hey, I’m going to go up and give him my resume is kind of amazing, but that it wasn’t the right time and when it was the right time, you got connected to him.

Kory: There’s another part of that that was again, the antenna alignment is for a couple of years I would bring e.l.f. products into our NPD meetings. NPD is new product development because I was really impressed with their ability to deliver this premium quality at this accessible price. And I’ll never forget this one meeting that I was in when I held up two brushes. One was for the brand that I was working on and it was a $30 brush, one was e.l.f.’s and it was a $4 brush. And I hid the logos and I asked everybody to tell me which one was the $30, which one was the $4, and everybody pointed to the $4 brush as the $30 brush. And so, they were on my radar obviously for Tarang, which had me then take notice of the brand and what they were up to. And then also for this incredible ability to make the best of beauty accessible.

And at that moment in my career, I realized that I was serving a very small portion of the population with these super premium, high-end brands. And while I love everything that they stand for and everything they do and the beauty that they’re able to bring to the marketplace, I wanted to be able to go from serving the happy few to serving the happy many. And what a position for me to be in with a company whose mission was to make the best of beauty accessible. I knew how to operate a prestige brand, so I knew the colors, codes, cues, language, storytelling, seduction, and captivation, and how to be compelling and appeal to emotion. And bringing that to a place that was able to do the quality of product but yet hadn’t wrapped that banner around it to make the brand a world you wanted to be a part of was just that perfect intersection where I could see that I could bring these two things in close alignment and bring the incredible world of luxury to the masses.

Heather: Yeah, incredible. So then you pack up your stuff, you decide you’re not going to curse anymore except for the use of e.l.f.ing or e.l.f. This was a time where my understanding was the brand had a lot of growth and then it kind of hit a wall. And that was a lot of what being this bold change agent was about. Where do you start? I mean a lot of people are often building their careers in one place and then shifting, and you talk a lot about getting close to the community and to the customer. But just tell me a little bit about how you navigate where to go first. I’m sure you were pulled in lots of different directions and what that first period of you being in this role looked like.

Kory: So I was really enamored by the conversation you had [with] the Chief Brand Officer of Barbie, and it’s a similar story where you just have to pause time and go back to the beginning. The first place I wanted to go was the Founders. Why did they start this brand in 2004? What was the climate? What was the purpose? What was the underlying fandom built off of? And understand if we had lost our way, was that even still relevant? So I spent most of my time there first, and what I found was those roots of disruption were not being watered every day. And if we could just reorient ourselves back to the greatest gifts that they had given us, which is the spirit under which they started this company, we would be able to get back to that high growth trajectory because it was all right there. 

And especially as a CMO and, you know this, there are really two choices that you have.

Either the stories are there, and you’re going to unleash them and find a way to tell them in a way that’s going to be compelling and captivating, or the stories are not there and you’re going to have to make some shit up. Now you can do both. And I didn’t have to make up anything. In fact, there are still so many stories that have yet to be told if we just turn e.l.f. inside out. So I love the rich bank and treasure chest of everything that was there. So that was the first part that gave me great confidence—that we could unleash this amazingness that was already here and reinforce that spirit as the core ethos that was going to be the guiding principle for the company. So that every day when we wake up, we’re drinking from the pool of the e.l.f. ethos, which is the renegade spirit, the bias for action, the entrepreneurial energy.

 
So that was the first thing. The second thing is my position is very unique in that I run end to end. So I have everything from product concept all the way to consumer purchase. And as you can imagine, it’s wildly overwhelming when you walk into an organization and you have product, you have creative, you have digital, you have all the things. So I really had to figure out what would make the greatest impact in the smallest amount of time. And what I realized very quickly was we didn’t have a brand, we had products, we had transactions, we didn’t have the hot brand we have today. This orbit that is a magnetic attraction for people who want to be part of our world. 

So I knew that if I was able to create a…or clearly articulate because it was already created, it was the clear articulation that was necessary. If I could articulate that in a motivating, energizing way, then I could give that to all of the leaders of the organization and they would have a solid base upon which to springboard. So I had to start with the brand, create a brand book, language, colors, codes, cues, universality. When I started, I interviewed a hundred people; at the time, we were less than 150 people. I interviewed a hundred people on what is e.l.f. and I got a hundred different answers. So I knew that there was a lack of North Star common thread that would be easy to implement because again, it was all there. 

So, the second part of that was not only of course our own employees, our community at large. So, I read every letter they had ever written us. I poured over comments, I spent time in the community to understand what was it really, for the folks that have been here, the OGs, the ones that have been sticking around from 2004 when we started, which was pre-iPhone. And what I found was we created a sense of belonging. We opened the border in a way that nobody else had for them. And what I mean by that is beauty can often be very exclusive and exclusionary. And when you think about the fact that two-thirds of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, there’s this incredible world they want a part of that everybody else shut them off from. And what e.l.f. had done was taken down the red velvet ropes and let everybody into the party. And it was that world of access, the accessibility redefined, that was really where the emotional connection was sitting. It wasn’t about the $2 eyebrow pencil; it was about the fact that this $2 eyebrow pencil brought me into a world that I was not previously invited into. And so, we really spent time then unleashing that and tapping into that sense of belonging, that sense of community, making them stakeholders, I am not here to create this brand for you. I am here to create this brand with you. So they’ve been with us on this journey every step of the way, helping us write the language. They feed us e.l.f.-isms, they tell us what products they want, they realize that we are here as stewards of their unique needs, wants, and desires.

Heather: That’s amazing. And as you said, to tap into something that’s actually quite authentic and that exists, but figuring out how to bottle it up and package it up and both internally and externally make it come to life. So e.l.f. was one of the first brands on TikTok, and I think I read you had this conversation maybe with your nephew and his girlfriend and they were showing you this new platform which you hadn’t heard of. Tell me a little bit about the conversation where that then took you. And then I would love to spend a little bit of time…I mean, you’ve been such a disruptor in the digital space, definitely have broken some rules that first foray into it, and then the kinds of things that you’ve been doing that have been so breakthrough.

Kory: One of the places you’ll always find me, and I was there again this Saturday at DragCon in LA, is on the floor. And I am always on the floor with the people hanging out, asking questions and doing what I do best, which is putting on a hat of infinite curiosity. So I was sitting on the floor by the pool with my nephew and his friends. At the time, they were 16 years old, and I was asking them about their social media habits. And my nephew’s girlfriend so clearly articulated it for me that it was like alarm bells were ringing in my head. And she said, Aunt Kory, Instagram is the place I go to feel bad about myself. TikTok is the place I go to be who I really am.

Heather: Wow.

Kory: That’s all I needed to hear. And the fact that she could articulate it that way at 16 years old told me something is happening on this platform that we better get on it and we better get on it fast. So when I got to the office on Monday, I asked the team, somebody tell me about TikTok, what’s going on with TikTok? And everybody was like, what are you even talking about? They’re like, that’s not an interesting platform. So, I made some phone calls and we started to forge a couple of things forward, but there was tension already inside my organization with my social team.

 
So that’s how at the early phase of this we were. And I had come from big companies, so my bigger fear was I was going to walk into the C-suite and they were going to say, how are you going to prove it? This is an unknown territory. What’s going to be your ROI? And all the questions that normally get asked, which is what stalls people from driving things forward. How do I prove something that’s unproven? So, I wound up spending a little bit of time with the TikTok team. They were obvious renegades. I found kindred spiritism. I was like, that’s it. We’re going and we’re going now and we’re going big. So, 60-second conversation is all it took. Walked into my CEO’s office. “Hey Tarang, I’m about to plunge us into TikTok.” He goes, “What’s TikTok?” “I’m like, take out your phone, download the app.” He’s like, “We don’t got time for that. What’s your KPI?” I go, billions of eyeballs. Time stop. And he goes, “Do you even know how many zeroes are in a billion?” True story. He’ll tell [it the] same way as I do, because it was so shocking. What do you mean billions?

Heather: Yeah.

Kory: Doesn’t make any sense. And he looked at me, he is like, “You could get billions of eyeballs.” I’m like, “Yep.” And he is like, “Great. Go do it.” That’s it. So that’s the type of renegade bias for action that is ingrained in our organization.

Heather: And trust.

Kory: And trust. So once you hit the big story, which we did out of the starting gate with a hashtag challenge that was the most successful of all time in terms of user-generated content, billions of views, massive virality by creating something we didn’t know how to create on a platform we didn’t know how to work with. What is a beauty brand doing creating an original music track? I don’t know how to make an original music track. I don’t even know what TikTok is. And that’s the beauty of e.l.f: Blank piece of paper, no preconceived notions. Every day is day one, lean into the discomfort. And we’ve been doing that ever since. And we have the rigor and discipline to go alongside the fearlessness because none of it is reckless. Based on an insight. We had this insight, we knew that Gen-Z was moving into the platform for those reasons. There was already a hashtag that had three-and-a-half million views on it called #e.l.f.cosmetics that we didn’t start. So we knew there was an audience there calling for us, and then we wanted to make sure that we went in, in a way that was going to get noticed. So everything we do is fearless and disciplined. There’s a solid reason behind what it is that we’re doing, and I want to make sure that your audience understands it’s not just this reckless behavior of, oh yeah, this thing is happening, go do it. It’s like, oh my God, this thing is happening. Let’s spend a minute to understand it. And what would need to be true to best serve that audience in the environment in which they are? And then create a campaign that is at the intersection between who are these people and what do they want and what is authentic to your brand.

Heather: Yeah. Well, I mean it’s incredible and in thinking about, as you said, how when things are unproven or unknown, there is no playbook for how it gets measured. But then we don’t try things that are unproven or unknown and it becomes this cycle. So there is a broader ethos that you’re operating within. You then get a number of wins on the board. It is hard, I think, to continually prove the value of marketing and brand building. Obviously, you’ve done that in spades. Not everybody has the kind of CEO that you’re talking about. Advice for those that are kind of hitting the wall, either in trying to break down the silos to all come together, and or painting the vision for things that are going to be innovative and hopefully move the needle, but I can’t prove it right now and I need the budget.

Kory: Yeah, for sure. I think the most important thing that you just said that I’ll build on is points on the board. 

So you have to get a proven story that you can then celebrate inside your organization and have people walking it into rooms that you’re not in. And that’s exactly what happened with this first foray that we did with TikTok, which was already built on the back of this recharge campaign that we had put to market about six months earlier, which was completely built off consumer truths and consumer insights. We were breaking benchmarks with our first ever brand campaign, which was built on six months’ worth of rigorous research behind who are these people and what do they love about us, what do they not love about us, and what are the truths that we want to tap into. So we add a couple of stories under our belt. Once you have those stories under your belt and you say, we saw this, we did this, this is how it performed, then people want more of it.

 
And I know that sounds simple, but it’s absolutely true. And you can’t try to boil the ocean and say, I have to go do these 650 things. Just take that one story, shoot a three-point shot, bring that story into every room you walk into, make sure people understand the value of it, but not just, I did a campaign and it generated X. What was the insight? What was the rigor behind how you created it? Then what was the result that it delivered? And then people are going to want to see more of it. When I had researched e.l.f. before I joined the company, it was a three-month interview process. I was basically a mini consultant because when you become a CMO, you want to study every facet of the brand to understand what’s actually happening. And all of the breakdowns in the consumer journey that I found trying to be an e.l.f. consumer, which was quite honestly really hard. The brand didn’t want to be my friend, and I was trying very hard to make the brand. 

So, what I realized when I got deeper and deeper inside of the organization, and this was again before I started, during the interview process, was it was a direct reflection of the organization itself. That it was so siloed that product wasn’t talking to social, who wasn’t talking to brand, right. So, everybody was doing their own thing and nobody was thinking about how do we create a circle around the community with a closed loop that moves end to end at speed without friction. So that’s how Tarang and I decided to build the organization, which is in service to the community. And many people say their community first. And I would ask them: Is your organization structured that way?

Heather: Right. I love that you said that because this idea of shape culture, connect community through positivity, inclusivity, accessibility…people throw that around. Some are actually walking the walk. But what you’re saying is you can’t just say this is an ambition, you actually have to orient the organization in such a way that can actually deliver on it. It’s like I assume everybody wants to deliver on that. What did that look like? Did you really do the restructuring of actually how marketing worked across that life cycle? Were there other things that you had to influence to actually orient the organization to be able to deliver on that vision?

Kory: Absolutely. So we had to restructure and we had to build verticals that didn’t exist. So it was about: Okay, do we have agreement that the community has to be at the center? Okay, if so, how do we best organize in service to? What is our raison d’etre? What is our reason for being? It’s our community, and if we’re a service-driven organization, then we have to make sure we’re building the entire organization that way. So we had to do restructuring. We had to build new verticals, we had to erect new functions. We had to change the way that we were operating. And at first, it’s a rough ride. It’s messy, it’s difficult. People are like, wait, what am I doing and who’s doing what? And you have to stay the course until you hit a rhythm. It’s like an orchestra conductor who starts on the first day. The clarinets don’t sound good with the flutes who don’t sound good with the drum, but guess what happens when they get on stage for that final performance. It’s totally seamless and no longer a cacophony. So it was a cacophony in the beginning. And you have to figure out, how do I continue to massage this until we can hit this rhythm that just sounds exceptional with everybody working together in harmony. 

So you have to be patient and you have to stick with it, and you also can’t be precious. Maybe some things you thought were going to work don’t. So that pivoting in real time…I have a very simple saying that’s great for right now, which is “do more of the stuff that works and quit doing the stuff that doesn’t.” And that’s what I apply on a regular basis. Hey, I thought this was a good idea in theory. In practice, it’s not. So let’s pivot. 

And another thing that needs to be true, I believe, as a forward-looking indicator of success is one, the distance between the C-suite and the community, and two, the distance between insight and action. And the reason I put them in that order, because order matters, is I could be all about the community, all I want all day every day. So could the lead team that operates under my structure. But if the C-suite is not on board with that, then you’re going to create friction inside your organization. So our CEO will get it on a TikTok live with me any day of the week. Our CFO has already been on three of them, and she just did a Twitch live stream with me, and 13,000 people showed up. 

Heather: Amazing. 

Kory: Our Chief Revenue Officer, you’ll find her sitting on the floor with me talking to the community and putting on her hat of curiosity.

So, this is a common thread among our C-suite. We care about the community. We’re in service to the community. We bring them into every room we walk into, including our board of directors, we have board meetings, guess who we’re talking about, the community. So that’s critical. 

And the second part is the insight to action part. If you have great distance between an insight and an action, I think that’s a forward-looking indicator of weak brand health. If you have zero distance between those two things, that’s a forward-looking indicator of incredible brand health. So I’m proud to say that we have zero distance and we can see an insight Monday morning. We have Monday morning meetings where we bring together a huge community of people who are decision makers in our organization. We talk about what’s happening, and by Tuesday morning we’ve got social posts out. We have wheels spinning inside the organization of things we’re capitalizing on or community asks that we want to answer or something we saw spark that we never dreamt about. And in a lot of companies, insights sit in a center of excellence and collect dust. In our community, they’re at the center of what we do.

Heather: I mean, that’s amazing. But as you know, very difficult. There’s a center of excellence. We’re hemming and hawing, are these the right metrics? Could we really do this? Time is a ticking, right. And we have to act. And I love that bias for action, and as you said, not in this reckless way, but in knowing that you’re getting good insight from the right people and then being able to action on it. I’m going to get back because you mentioned board of directors, but before I do, I’d love for you to talk to me about Keys Soulcare.

Kory: Yeah, sure. So Keys is a beautiful brand that we created in the essence and spirit of Alicia Keys. And that was an incredible journey just to be the company of choice. And a lot of Alicia’s beauty rituals that she has collected over the years to be the incredible human and beautiful skin that she has today are a collection of experiences that we wanted to bring to life through this brand. And while we were at the time, I would say an unlikely choice for her, the kindred spiritism is actually what drove it. ’Cause she had met other companies that had a preconceived notion of who she should be, what she should be, how this brand should be. And when she met us, one, she saw a lot of women in leadership. She saw our commitment to women in diversity, and that was critical for her. And she found kindred spirits in us. And when kindred spirits come together to become each other’s force multipliers, that’s where magic happens. So we decided to create a brand that colors completely outside of the lines. Is it beauty? Is it wellness? Is it skincare? Right. And we created Soulcare because it’s something that doesn’t exist. It’s a category that nobody talks about. And we wanted to really put a line in the sand that caring for you inside here is how you glow outside here.

So it’s been an exceptional journey. And to go back to your opening in the beginning, a moment of coloring outside of the lines by creating a category that actually does not exist.

Heather: And so you’re also serving as President of that brand. What does that entail when you put that hat on versus your CMO hat?

Kory: So, this is really about bringing together the trifecta and all of the touch points of running a brand at large, beyond the end-to-end consumer journey. So, Alicia’s vision and how do we bring that to life, the artistic direction, the teams of people around her. So, it’s a very different operating model. So, ensuring that we are creating a brand that is a mirror image of her vision of beauty, and then making sure that we could serve that to a growing high affinity audience, and at the same time making sure that we are building a business for the long term.

Heather: Amazing. And I love the fact that you’re wearing both of those hats. And it is a good segue. 

As we had said before, this idea of being an inclusive brand has to mirror the way in which you’re organized. And I think that the e.l.f. board is 56% women, 33% diverse, and one of only 26 public companies listed in the U.S. where members of underrepresented demographic groups are at least a third, which is amazing. 

And so I had read about and seen this incredible campaign. If you haven’t checked it out, please do: “So Many Dicks.” It’s really calling out the lack of women and diversity on boards in a way that is really, I think, mind-blowing for people and just exploring the statistics and why, despite a lot of talk and understanding, we still haven’t been able to move the needle. What was the inspiration behind that and what is the hope in terms of what will come out of that campaign, either for e.l.f. or more broadly? 

Kory: Of all the things that I’ve done in my career, this is the campaign I’m most proud of.

Heather: That’s amazing.

Kory: I am going to take you on a journey because I think it’s important for your audience to understand what needs to be true for something like that to be true. 

So first, you have to build a brand that is easily identifiable for a certain style and way of being. And we earned ours right at e.l.f. over years of being humorous and playful and audacious and disruptive. And in fact, when we’re not those things, people wonder what’s going on with us. So we’ve done such a good job on that path. We’re so true to that ethos and that essence of bold disruption with a kind heart that people come to us for that. So that’s one. 

Two is I always have my hat on looking for signals, and I work on earnings with our investor relation team and obviously our CFO. We partner on that journey. And we brought a stat into our earnings at some point that we were one of four publicly traded companies out of 4,200 that have a board of directors that’s two-thirds women and one-third diverse. And I remember when I was reading that stat when we were doing the earning script, that it fell on me like a ton of bricks, and I’ve been in our boardroom many times. But still, seeing it on paper written like that in that way, it hit me over the head. So I was like, you know, this is one of those moments where the stories inside the treasure chest you’re always looking for…what’s the one I’m going to turn off inside-out and wrap a compelling captivating campaign around? So, I said, well, let me just try to take this out on the trail and see what reaction I get. 

So I would take it to some of my public speaking engagements, and I’d realized that the first time I would say it, people had the same reaction as me, is you’re kind of dizzy. You’re like, wait, I don’t understand. What did she just say? So then I would repeat it a second time, and then I would see an unprompted round of applause. Because it’s like, give me a minute to understand what you just said, and then hit me with it again. And now I’m like, wait, what. Right. So I started to see that over and over. 

So we started to take that stat out more and more, and the reaction was like rocket fuel for all of us. Tarang took it on Jim Cramer, and everywhere we went, we would see that this was the thing people would remember, write down, ask questions about. So I said, okay, there’s something real here, but that’s not enough. Because having women in diversity, most people are going to say yes, so what? Well, the so what is it’s good for business and its bottom line. 

So if you’re going to have a campaign called “So many Dicks,” you better have the receipts to prove it at anything that anybody could peel away; you’re going to find gold at the center. And as soon as we had the stat that said we were the number one performing stock on the New York Stock Exchange of the last five years with 1,567% growth, I was like, that’s it. Stop time. Now we’re ready. We have 20 consecutive quarters of growth, we’re the number one performing stock on the NYSE. People will have no choice but to listen to us.

 
So that all had to be true. We could have launched this campaign three years ago. I don’t think it would’ve had the impact that it had now. So timing matters and the ability to be so brash and fun and playful and serious about a topic is an earned right that we brought forward when we had the business receipts to prove it.

Heather: Unbelievable. And again, I really encourage everybody to check it out, and I’m sure that was an amazing moment for you and for all of those that worked on it. 

Kory: We’re not done yet. So.

Heather: Oh I know, trust me.

Kory: So everybody knows it’s the early innings of the work that we want to do. And I’ll go back to the second part of your question, which was: What do we hope to achieve? 

Heather: Yes.

Kory: That’s very simple. More women and diversity in the highest seats of decision-making power. We want to double the rate of growth of both of those on boards of directors. Our board is proof positive and not only our board, but if you look at the companies that have more women on boards especially, you’re going to find greater performance. And those stats exist. McKinsey has studied this. Many incredible organizations have studied this time and time again, women are good for business. Diversity is good for the top line and the bottom line. So we are at the early innings of fighting to put more women in diversity in the highest seats of power.

Heather: Period. I mean, amazing. I love it. And similarly, I’ve studied this and this phenomenon and it’s like, I don’t know how much more you could beat people over the head with this, where it isn’t just about goodwill and it isn’t just about it’s the right thing to do. If you want to have a thriving business now into the future, that’s a way to do it. 

Switching gears a little bit, you often, as I would imagine, because you’re a bit of a disruptor, looking outside of your industry for inspiration and at brands that are simply kicking ass, what brands are you learning from right now? Any that stand out that you think are doing interesting things that you’ve learned from?

Kory: Well, you just had Andy Pearson on in your last podcast. 

Heather: Yes. 

Kory: Drinking Liquid Death right now.

Heather: Amazing. 

Kory: This brand is extraordinary. I love everything about the brand and I love everything about the people who stand behind the brand because at the end of the day, a brand is a representation of the people that are standing behind it. They’re like us on a one-way path of disruption. They’re not interested in the status quo. They’re interested in doing something different with a purpose that has a unique perspective to bring to the marketplace. And we did a collaboration with them earlier this year, which was absolutely exceptional. It broke all records in our house of any collaboration that we had done before it, and we launched something called Corpse Paint on a random Tuesday in March. So, that just gives you a perfect illustration of what happens when two bold disruptors come together. It’s corpse paint. 

The other brand that I love that we also worked with in the past is Chipotle, and their marketing is just so smart. It’s so fast, it’s so clever, it’s so community-driven. It’s very much taking consumer truths and bringing them to the foreground at speed. The collaboration that we had done with them at the early phases—it was 2019—really was born out of both of us being early adopters of TikTok. And for six months, every article I read was e.l.f., Chipotle, TikTok, e.l.f., Chipotle, TikTok, e.l.f., Chipotle, TikTok, and I was like, wait, wait, wait.

What if e.l.f. and Chipotle came together? And I think they continue to move at the speed of culture and make the best of high-quality ingredients accessible to the masses. So we are very much divinely aligned in that mission. 

And another brand that I really love is Gymshark. And I got to know Gymshark because of their CEO, Ben Francis, and I don’t know Ben personally, but I follow him and I’m blown away by how public he is about his journey as a business founder, as a CEO and as a leader with a very kind heart. He’s incredibly empathetic. He is also very humble. He stepped down as a CEO because he realized he was in some ways over-jobbed and needed to learn more before he could step back into that role. So I started following the brand because of him, and it made me fall in love with the brand even more.

Heather: Amazing. So, I’m going to close this incredible conversation with a question that I tend to close with. Do you have an icon? And if so, who?

Kory: Can I have three? 

Heather: You can absolutely. Because you don’t follow the rules. So why just have one if you could have three.

Kory: So I like to break things down, head, heart, and soul, because I think that you need the trifecta to really make magic happen. 

And when I think about head, it’s Mike Cessario, he’s the Founder and CEO of Liquid Death. And his opening question is, “What is the dumbest thing that we could do?” And his ability to flip things on their head and normalize the bizarre and disrupt time and time again is truly extraordinary. And I’m very much enamored by what he’s doing. And I’m convinced that Liquid Death will go down in history as just one of the most incredible case studies of disruption.

Heather: Amazing.

Kory: On the heart side, Billie Jean King. I have had the incredible honor of spending a lot of time with her. She’s on the journey with us to change the board game. She did it in sports. We celebrated her 50 years of equal pay for equal play. She’s very passionate about equality. She’s a champion for equality. And that over 80 years old—this woman will fight the good fight until her last breath, as she likes to say. And it’s because it lives in her heart. She is a kind soul who genuinely wants to do greater for humanity. 

And on the soul part, it will become no surprise to you that that’s Alicia Keys. She has absolutely changed my life in very deeply meaningful ways. I’ve adopted the philosophies that we preach through the Key Soulcare brand, and I start my morning looking in the mirror and saying kind things to myself. Adopting the philosophy of feeding myself affirmations and welcoming good energy into my space. And it has absolutely changed my life. So taking care of our soul first gives us the gas that we need to get out there in the world and do great things.

Heather: Oh, that’s so incredible. So if you could see me, I know everyone is listening, but I have pages and pages of notes like you did. Truly. And everything that you’ve said has been so real and inspiring, and it has been really so amazing to meet you. I guess, to everyone walking away with hopefully a little bit more of the courage to be fearless, but disciplined. To lean into discomfort, and certainly when presented with a bold opportunity or challenge, say: Why the e.l.f. not? I mean, because honestly, that’s how amazing things happen. 

So thank you so much, Kory. You are incredible, and the brand is incredible. And watch this space as you said, because you guys are just beginning. Thank you so much for your time.

Kory: Thank you for having me. And I want to thank you for the service that you’re providing to your audience. I’ve been listening to your podcast and taking notes and learning, and it is truly a service that you’re giving to me and other business leaders. So, thank you very much, and thank you to your audience for listening.