This brow gels gonna make you a better marketer. Let me explain why. I’ve just been listening to e.l.f beauty’s CMO, Kory Marchisotto, on the Uncensored CMO podcast and what a woman! I wanna share some of the highlights because she really was so interesting. Firstly Kory talks about when she joined the brand and how she previously received career advice to “go and do the hard things” so always gonna do the job that makes it feel like it’s a challenge because it will be the most rewarding. She talks about how when she first joined she really got under the skin of the brand, worked out who they were, what the origin story was what they stand for, and then from they then start to build it back up. So, what’s the clear brand story, what they want to communicate, how does the brand show up? And then filter that down into really clear brand highlights. I used to work in the marketing team at Benefit Cosmetics and when I reflect on my time there oh my god the amount of freedom we had and how much we can push our own creativity because it was so clear on who we were as a brand, what we weren’t, we had a really clear point of view, we knew who our customer was and it just made making decisions so much easier. Back to Kory. When she joined e.l.f. as CMO in 2019 they were spending 6% of the net revenue on marketing and then they made the decision to shut down retail and syphon that money into marketing. Now they’re spending 25% of their net revenue on marketing which is like much more in line with wider industry standards. In that time they’ve gone from $250 million net revenue to $1bn dollar net revenue which I think fundamentally underlines this truth that brand building will ultimately lead to sales. Kory talked a lot about community, she talk about bringing the CEO and the CFO into conversations and talked about this weekly meeting where all of the community insight is gathered and shared with the business leaders, the decision makers and that’s how they can make change almost in real time, which obviously is gonna help build trust with the customer because they’re respected, they’re listened to. Kory also talked a lot about entrepreneurial spirit; being agile, nimble speedy. Speed was actually one of their values. In a previous Uncensored CMO episode I reviewed with Sophie Devonshire she talks about businesses that are super clear on who they are they can make quick decisions because they have that clarity. Kory talked a lot about helping a challenger brand when I worked at Benefit we were like No. 1 premium beauty brand in the UK but we felt like the naughty little sister in the LVMH group because what we’re doing was so different to our peers. There were so many highlights in this episode; things like talking about targeting all ages within their marketing, not just Gen Z, collaborations, I don’t know if anyone seen the Liquid Death corpse paint? Brilliant. And also Kory finished off giving some like really wonderful advice to young marketers but yeah go go have a listen she was just awesome she’s like totally the kind of boss you want just fab