Talking sports with e.l.f. Cosmetics CMO Kory Marchisotto is less about athletics or even cosmetics than what the access afforded by both means to fans and consumers.
A few weeks ago, ADWEEK asked for Marchisotto’s thoughts about the cosmetics industry’s recent activity in women’s sports based on e.l.f. Cosmetics’ sponsorship of the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL), the Billie Jean King Cup by Gainbridge women’s tennis tournament, the iHeart Women’s Sports Audio Network, Paralympic swimmer Anastasia Pagonis, IndyCar and NASCAR driver Katherine Legge, and, most recently, the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL).
Marchisotto, backed by iHeart host Sarah Spain and NWSL executive Matt Soloff, noted that the brand carved out a place in women’s sports by using its resources to help create opportunities where they previously didn’t exist.
Left out of Marchisotto’s contribution, however, was much of the inspiration behind the brand’s foray into sports, the calculus that led to its appearance during the Super Bowl, and the context provided by Billie Jean King herself that pushed Marchisotto to expand e.l.f.’s presence in the game.
Here are the rest of Marchisotto’s insights into e.l.f. Cosmetics’ investment in women’s sports, as well as the women who follow sports:
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
ADWEEK: You’ve said that when you started at e.l.f. six and a half years ago, you received correspondence from consumers telling you that you weren’t selling cosmetics: You were democratizing access. How did that influence the brand going forward?
Marchisotto: People would say things to us like, “E.l.f., you saved my life at a time when nobody else was there for me. E.l.f., you invited me into a world that everybody else shut me out of.”
I realized that e.l.f. was a symbol for the overlooked and a champion of the underdog, and when you reframe a brand like that, it starts to completely change the aperture, the perspective, the way in which you show up in the world.
