It’s not easy being a retail marketer these days.

We live in a time when marketing budgets across the retail sector have been slashed. A May 2024 Gartner survey of 395 chief marketing officers and marketing leaders found that marketing budgets dropped to 7.7 percent of overall company revenue in 2024. The chief of research for Gartner said that CMOs were living in an “era of less,” with increasing costs from talent and digital media — combined with a decreasing yield — resulting in CMOs struggling to successfully deliver their marketing strategies.

This couldn’t be further from the truth at e.l.f. Beauty. Gen Z’s favorite makeup brand has posted 24 consecutive quarters of net sales growth and market share gains amid a sharply unstable time of inflation, competition, supply chain uncertainty, political turmoil, and more. At the end of 2024, e.l.f. Beauty was targeting 24 percent to 26 percent allocation of marketing dollars, compared to 7 percent five-and-a-half years ago.

e.l.f.’s Chief Marketing Officer Kory Marchisotto and Chief Financial Officer Mandy Fields credit their symbiotic relationship — defined by a mutual respect and shared understanding of each other’s departments and responsibilities — as one of the major reasons for the retailer’s success.

Marchisotto and Fields sat down with Nadine Dietz, co-founder and CEO of Virtuosi LEAP, at a Women in Retail Leadership Circle On the Road event in San Francisco this past November to share exactly how investing in marketing leads to a formula for success at e.l.f. Beauty.

Powerhouse Innovation and Value Proposition

A product sold by e.l.f. costs, on average, $6.50, according to Fields. The company’s value proposition is that you can get the best of beauty at an affordable price. e.l.f. prides itself on affordability, outperforming prestige brands regularly. At a time when consumers are increasingly cutting back on spending, e.l.f. has positioned itself well.

The dedication e.l.f. has to its value proposition goes hand in hand with passionate owners that care immensely that two-thirds of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, according to Marchisotto. That, in turn, leads to a “powerhouse innovation engine” centered around the e.l.f. community, she said.

“We bring together the best combination of cost, quality and speed so that we can bring to market incredible products that are trend-driven, that are delivering what our community wants, and that they shouldn’t have to wait for,” Marchisotto said.

Marchisotto gave the example of an in-demand prestige product — bronzing drops — that caught the eye of the e.l.f. fan base, but that e.l.f. had not yet created. She said customers demanded through every e.l.f. channel — and they have a lot (Twitch, X, private Facebook groups, Instagram, TikTok, Roblox, etc.) — that the company offer this product at a price they could afford.

Taking the customer demand to its innovation team, e.l.f. set out to not only make a version of the prestige company’s bronzing drops, but improve upon it. However, creating and putting a new product in market can take months, and Marchisotto could feel the consumer base getting anxious. There was a feeling of “there’s a party happening and I’m not invited,” she said.

To address customer anxiety, Marchisotto asked e.l.f.’s CEO to do a TikTok LIVE about the status of the bronzing drops. “I let them terrorize him for 30 minutes,” said Marchisotto. “He left the TikTok LIVE, went down the hall to the innovation team and said, ‘I need bronzing drops, and I need them as fast as humanly possible,’ and we went to market in six months.”

Passionate Owners and ‘So Many Dicks’

Marchisotto said e.l.f. employees, who all own equity in the company, are a big part of the company’s success. “We’re not just employees of the company,” she said. “We’re passionate owners. We all have a stake. That changes your orientation.”

The impetus behind the 2024 “So Many Dicks” campaign was to evaluate whether other companies had boards that looked like e.l.f.’s — one that, at the time of the study, was comprised of two-thirds women and one-third diverse board members. (Today, the e.l.f. board is 78 percent female and 44 percent diverse.)

“Every time Mandy and I would go to the board meeting, we’d come out and be like, ‘This seems rare,'” Marchisotto said. The study they conducted revealed that only three other publicly traded companies, out of a possible 4,100, had a board composition resembling e.l.f.’s.

“At first you’re like, ‘Whoah, let’s take a victory lap, we’re one of four,'” Marchisotto said. “And then you’re like, ‘Wait a minute, I’m pissed off. Why are there only four? This doesn’t make any sense.'”

Marchisotto, Fields and e.l.f. CEO Tarang Amin decided this fact alone was worth investing marketing dollars to show the world what could be possible when you had owners who put women and diversity in the highest seats of power. Further analysis into the study found that there were more men named “Richard” or “Dick” on U.S. corporate boards then entire groups of underrepresented people.

Enter the cleverly named “So Many Dicks” campaign, which aimed to “shock people into awareness,” noted Marchisotto.

Disruptive Marketing Engine

e.l.f.’s marketing strategy has been studied and scrutinized by players across the retail industry, and for good reason. While the average retail company puts out around two major marketing campaigns a year, e.l.f. — as of the On the Road event in October — had already put out 15. The company’s earnings report indicate that something’s working.

“We’re not afraid to take a risk; we’re not afraid to jolt people into awareness because everything we do is rigorous and disciplined,” Marchisotto said.

There was, of course, the “So Many Dicks” campaign; the November “Game On” campaign in which actress Joey King boasted e.l.f.’s Power Grip Primer to drive home her sports team fandom; The “Face the First Date” campaign in partnership with Tinder; and e.l.f.’s 2024 Super Bowl commercial featuring Judge Judy and the stars of the television series “Suits.”

e.l.f.’s success comes, in part, by positioning itself everywhere its customers are — on all the previously mentioned channels — and seizing opportunities in pop culture moments, trends and viral moments. That can only happen when you’ve got a finance leader and a marketing leader working in sync.

“I view marketing as a growth driver,” Fields said. “The more you invest behind marketing, the more you should see the return on sales.”

Women in Retail Leadership Circle members can view Fields’ and Marchisotto’s full interview on-demand now. Not a member? Apply today!