How does that affect your approach?
When you get into that scenario, you start to branch out. We attached ourselves to the equality champion Billie Jean King. When we wanted to do our Change the Board Game campaign to make sure that women in diversity had seats in the highest positions of power and to create a way to jolt people into awareness, we brought Billie Jean King with us because she did it in the sports arena. Then, through Billie Jean King, we started working with the Professional Women’s Hockey League, another area where women were being overlooked and underserved.
So, you see how this works: You start to get yourself into a new network. You start to put energy out there. That energy starts to bring back kindred spirits and like-minded disruptors, who we then partner with to elevate women in sports.
As e.l.f. began amassing sponsorship partners and listening to athletes and figures within women’s sports, how did the brand itself start to adapt?
It gives us so much rocket fuel in our tank, because what we see, more than anything, is the power of feeling seen, supported, and amplified.
When we understood that women’s wrestling was the fastest growing high school sport in America, we went to sponsor the high school championship, and people were coming to us in droves just to say, “Thank you. Thank you for seeing me. Thank you for showing up for me. Thank you for being here for me in a meaningful way,” because no one was showing up for them.
