Behind E.L.F. Beauty’s Viral Success with Laurie Lam

0:28Hey, welcome to the CMO Whisper Show. at Elf Beauty, the powerhouse behind Elf Cosmetics, Elf Skin, Well People, Keys So Care, and with nearly two decades of experience shaping global brands, Lori is a dynamic marketer and strategic innovator who's redefining what an authentic, accessible beauty company looks like. Now, before joining Elf, Lori held leadership roles at L 'Oreal USA, working across the U.S., France, and Asia Pacific in marketing, e-com acquisitions, biz dev, and brand innovation. Finally, she's credited with helping supercharge Elle's reputation for quality, inclusivity, and viral cultural moments from TikTok stardom to collabs with brands like Chipotle, Duncan, and yes, even Tinder.

1:16Lori Lamb, my newfound best friend, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Steve. You are very welcome. them. And if our conversation recording is anything like our non-recorded conversation, you guys, you guys are in for a treat. You guys are in for a treat. Okay. Jumping right in. I want to start with your personal and your, your career, your leadership style. So you've worked across a lot of different continents, a lot of different brands. Is there a through line from L 'Oreal to Elf? Yeah, there is. I think for me, the through line has always been trying to do something that people say is either impossible or hard.

1:55I've always been working for underdog brands. And I think that's been a through line for me is trying to do something that is not in my comfort zone, something that scares me, something that I've never done before that hasn't been achieved before. And I guess I'm sort of setting myself up here because I am the first girl. I'm the first one in my family to actually have finished school. And as a first-generation daughter in New York, a lot of the things that I'm doing are first. So I'm almost setting myself to pat myself on the back for everything that I'm doing that no one's done before. What do you think you've taken from those stops?

2:31And part two of that, how often during your day-to-day at Elf do you fall back or go, I remember that time at L 'Oreal? Yeah, quite often, actually. Quite often. Even how I got started into beauty was something of a way of wanting to disrupt what I was being told. I couldn't do. And that couldn't do was I wasn't allowed to wear makeup. Yes, the chief brand officer at LPD wasn't allowed to wear makeup growing up. It goes back to I was not allowed to wear makeup. And I realized how bizarre that sounds today. But I strategized as a teen on how to wear makeup. So it started with someone telling me I couldn't do something.

3:10And I was like, I'm going to go and do it. I found a job that guaranteed I can wear makeup. And that landed me at an Estee Lauder counter in the community of Queens, New York. And I found myself a job because I knocked on that counter when a Northeast regional manager was doing a counter check there. And she said, kid, you got guts. And I landed a part-time job there while I was still in high school and I was wearing braces. So it was like against all odds, you would never hire me. I look so young, but I got the job. I was curious. I asked a lot of questions. I ended up helping to bring that counter to be the most productive counter in the Northeast.

3:46And we want a dinner with the lauders. I was 15. But that job first taught me how to one strategize to find a way to do something that I really knew I wanted to do, which was to wear makeup. So I found a job that allowed me to do that. I also learned a lot about Halloween and pursue beauty, especially when you're selling them on$300 creams. I also learned what a consumer wants, what their demands are, how to listen for their needs. And that was my very early beauty start. That spirit of listening, disrupting, hustling had never left me to my start at L 'Oreal. I started there five years after my Esther Lauder experience, after I got my undergrad.

4:24And I started there and that world is built on R &D and marketers. And I knew, knew in my gut, Steve, that I wanted to be part of that. I learned the importance of storytelling. I also worked for all of the underdog brands, the brands that had less than 5 % market share, because those are the ones that don't have the robust budgets. Those are the ones that require you to be so creative in how you craft something, how you find a way to fuel the business and their bottom line by generating stories, launches, amazing products, thinking about how to give something in exchange for a service to make a difference in someone's life.

4:58And we often joked at L 'Oreal that we're not curing cancer, but certainly what we were doing was we were bringing a sense of confidence to women to be their best selves. And that's something that I really carry through. And I was passionate about my work. I was passionate about the difference I made, especially I was working with hairdressers. And so I had firsthand knowledge of working with salon owners as humans, learning how to build their business, learning how to feel their bottom line, learning how to grow something out of nothing and also be responsible for staff. And that was really big.

5:33That was probably the biggest part of my journey. I took that across different zones and different facets of marketing, but it was a really great experience. And it threaded from my experience at Estee Lauder as a counter girl at the age of 15, because I carried that same sort of grit and hustle and making something out of nothing to bring to hairdressers, to make a difference in their lives, in what salons could be now, which is a place that people often find is a safe haven. That's a community. It is a community. It is. I mean, oftentimes you, I think the, in my experience, what I've seen is people tell their hairdressers more things than they tell their therapist and their own spouse.

6:16It's true. No, I believe you. I, it's that sense of comfort, right? Yeah. It's a sense of comfort. It's actually one of the only professions out there that you can still legally touch someone. I hadn't thought of it like that. One of my first bosses told me that and stayed with me. And I was like, oh, Eureka, we are touching lives. Interesting. I do like that. Okay. So 15, defying odds, fearless, right? How, talk to me and us about the trajectory and your path to becoming a leader and then how it's influenced your leadership style. How would you describe your leadership style? My leadership style, I would say is heartful, a lot of empathy and with bold disruption and speed.

6:59And it's no surprise that those are actually facets that I saw in ELF. And I knew that that was going to be a place for me. And I have to say, I thank my family for this, because I do think my first lesson in leadership actually comes from having a younger brother and family circumstances where I almost became a guardian to my brother. And he's my training wheels to the point where my husband says, now you have one son and two biological daughters. The son is actually my brother because I took care of him as a parent would. and learned what responsibility was and what it meant to be protected and what it meant to live and listen to someone else's feelings so that you can actually help them or guide them in life.

7:40Growing up in an immigrant household as well, which meant I had a lot of uncles and aunts and cousins, taught me that even though I was the first born in my nuclear family, in my unit, I was actually very much a youngest child in a family full of other cousins. And I learned that if you want to make impact, if you want to be heard, you have to make it bold and you have to break the status quo because it's been done before six other ways and you've got to make it meaningful. Yeah. And I also learned speed because in a house that first of all, Cantonese is language I grew up speaking in English.

8:11And if you want to get something done, if you ever heard anyone speak Cantonese, you can say probably 20 sentences in one sentence. It's very fast if you want to get your point across. And if you want that last piece of bun that someone put on the table, you got to go and get it yourself and you got to find a way to get it so my leadership actually comes from a very young age of of having this experience of caring for a family and being in a family and being bold and distrustful and that that has been something that is carried through with my start at elf and why i came to elf was because i saw that in the leaders yeah every single leader that i met with it just it cannot be overstated the importance of that no Oh, it's really important.

8:53That year when I joined Elf, my intention word that I had set for myself was Unleash. I was at a point in my career where I wanted to do that. I had life-changing events, one of which was I had lost my father before that. So it made me think about where do I want to live? What kind of legacy do I want to leave behind? The other was it was about a year or two years after COVID, right? One year after we actually probably came out again and started socializing. And I was living in the pandemic with two young girls watching my every move. And it made me think about what I wanted to do in life and where I wanted to make an impact and spend my time.

9:27So I was sort of at a crossroads. And those things made me feel very much like I need to find my anchor. I need to feel my purpose. And when I started sitting with people at Elf, I learned that there are people who do walk the talk. And that is at Elf where I found my North Star. I found a company that believes in diversity, ensures that women in diversity are put in the highest seats of decision making power. We have a board that has two thirds women and one third diverse. And when I discovered that we were only one of four companies that did that, that was really game changing for me. It told me that I'm at a place where it's not only are we breathing rare air, but we're doing something different about it.

10:08Because the mission, which is democratize access to beauty, is not just a mission. It's actually something we're doing every single day. That's amazing. I wish every brand and marketer and CEO could hear you say that. And because it's, you know, I have a saying in life that it's called checking the box. No matter what you do in life, are you doing it or are you just checking the box? Clearly, Elf is not just checking the box. No, no, absolutely not. For me, it was very much taking who that girl was. Let's just say my 14-year-old, 15-year-old self coming into that counter, that hustle and that grit and what I knew I needed to do because I actually helped put myself through college with that money that I earned as a counter girl.

10:49That was my mission. Not only wear makeup, but also help my family. And so for me, it was coming out of this saying, okay, I have to be a good person. I have to be a good human, but I also do a responsible human. And for me, ELF was very much that chapter of being able to do that. Here I am, mom, coming out of this. my intention word is unleashed. I meet a CEO, a CMO, a CFO who all are channeling that. And it's not checking the box as you say, Steve, it's really embodying this in every single facet of their lives, personal lives and who they are at health. And I knew that I had something to learn from them.

11:25And I'll say it for you and vice versa. I'll say it for you. So you're welcome. All right. So disruption, bold, you know, pick every brand on the planet. It says we want to be bold. We want to be bold. Name a brand that doesn't want to be bold. Exactly. But when it comes to those two words, help doesn't tiptoe. Right. But what's the mindset of like, where's the line? And I assume it's on a case by case or where do you go bold or when you go even bolder or you go hold on even. That's too much for us. I think it goes back to who we are. Elf has always been disrupting, right? And Elf, we've believed in showing up for our community, no matter where they are.

12:08And for 20 years, we've been doing that. 20 years, it started with a father-son duo that started this business because they had a mission and they had a vision to be a different kind of beauty company. That's who we are today. And the mission is to democratize access to beauty. And they started that company by selling cosmetics over the internet for a dollar in 2004, 20 years ago, over 20 years ago. And that spirit of disruption has never left the building. We're in a different building now. It's never left the building. It's never left the sense of culture. It's created who we are as a company and our commitment to disrupt norms, to shape culture and connect communities.

12:45So important because it is the DNA of disruption. I mean, setting up a company that sells something for a dollar, even today, it wouldn't work in this world of social commerce. So every bet was saying, no, this is never going to work. It's never going to work. And they continue. Their relentless spirit has never wavered. And being a digital first company also sets you up to be a digital disruptor, which is why pioneering on new platforms actually comes really naturally for us. Because it's always been a lean in, let's pioneer. Don't wait for the signals. Go and make your own signals. Go and make your own constellation.

13:17and others will follow and they have followed. So walk us through, hypothetically, somebody in your team comes to you with this idea. Do you then, like, is this kind of how it works? Like whatever the idea is, and I can almost see you having like a bold scale. Bold, bolder and... And off the low scale. Exactly. So how do you decide where that line is? Yeah. Well, I think there's a couple of factors there, right? So one of the things when you walk into any one of our elf offices, you'll see the logo when you walk in, you'll be greeted by a beautiful human that will welcome you into our home because we consider anyone who's part of Elf to be part of our family.

13:59And you will see under our logo, bold disruptors with a kind heart. And that is very important in terms of who comes into the company, raising my hand here, and who we use to, who we fuel and who we build a community around, right? So yes, moving at the speed of culture and ability to create these campaigns, some of them that you mentioned, we look at it through a filter of it has to be culturally relevant and it has to be emotionally resonant. And that's the intersection where the magic happens. And ideas do come. We have meetings every Monday for our team. What's going out there? What's happening that's relevant?

14:36What is our community telling us through emails and our social? And through those, we stream actually our community is actually the biggest pipeline for ideas because they will come. And through these ideas, I'll give you a really good example. We move at the speed of community. Two examples, actually, from a viral lip gloss kit to dropping a care package to the viral new sensation, Oliver Widget and his cat, Phoenix, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Elf is a brand that is shaping culture, but we do it in a way that we're actually able to do it with our community and we operate in real time.

15:12That's the difference. So Oliver Widget, I'll spend a moment there. That was a crazy idea the team had. And within five to six days, we saw him, the whole world was following his journey through the Pacific and we found it. Someone came into the chat, literally on text. And I think it was a Sunday that I got this chat in the morning and said, look at this guy. Everyone's following him. I was invested. Everyone's invested in him. And we decided to go in. The team said, I think we should send him a care package. And for us, we made waves when we dropped that care package, which wasn't even branded elf.

15:48We just packed it with snacks. We packed it with cat snacks. We packed it with SPF because he needs it. And he was on his daring journey across the Pacific. And we tapped young, skilled workers. And I don't know if anyone knows this, but we actually tapped young, skilled aviators in a nonprofit, which is a loft network. And we tracked his sailboat in the middle of the ocean. Wow. We tracked his and we dropped that pair package to him. He didn't even know who it was from. Wow. It was like, this is a big room heaven. And it was incredible. We created a Twitch that had like over 150 ,000 views. We fueled incredible social virality.

16:26We even created a Roblox game with him, a game jam with him. And we amplified it everywhere because for us, it was less about the virality of it, which were, you know, again, we weren't aiming for that. It brought all of that to us. But for us, it was about democratizing access to the dream chasers and the rule breakers. And Oliver and his cat Phoenix, I guess, by default, are dream chasers and rule breakers. He quit his job. He had a dream. He was going to sail across. We then found him on his way to Hawaii. And that was real time, five to six days max. Another one that we did, which is I mentioned was a halo glow lip gloss kits.

17:02This is another incredible one because what we did was we adeptly leveraged our TikTok phenomenon, which where we saw individuals emptying their halo glow, which is a foundation highlighter contour tool, a glow master all in one. And they emptied it and they filled it with lip products. So they just started taking lip glosses. I don't know if your daughter knows about this. Empty lip balms, lip glosses in there because the Halo Glow bottle has an amazing doe foot. And the doe foot is actually something that you can apply and get very targeted application with. So the girlies found that you can actually use that to apply lip gloss.

17:38It was incredible. What we did was then we said, oh my God, this is incredible. So then we created a kit of the empties because everyone was struggling to clean it. killing water, paper towels, Q-tips, everything that was going in there. And so we created an actual kit that dropped into our community. And it sold out in 19 hours. 19 hours. It's smart demands for them to create something that was permanent for them. It created amazing virality engagement. I think even that week, we had the number one growing hashtag for lip gloss globally. And my team had tracked that at that time, seven out of 10 videos actually featured Halo Glow Lip.

18:18Wow. So we broke the internet in a way, but that was required us to move at the speed of culture. We built it. The common denominator among, there's a lot between those two, but to me, chief among them is you did not, you got out of your own way, right? You didn't go, let's have a meeting about this or a meeting about the meeting. you knew it you're like nope this feels right we're going it's like let's go and when you build a company with bold judge doctors with kind hearts and they all saw the meaning of how the meaning of why to do this why are we doing this for all of earners cap right because one everybody woke up not knowing if he was gonna be alive the next day so going that extra mile when you build your company with that culture fit it doesn't make something like this impossible it makes it possible because you have a team of disruptors who are coming to say, oh, how can we do this differently?

19:12How can we do this with positivity, inclusivity, and accessibility? Does it actually meet every single one of those? Yeah. You know, almost like a filter that it has to go through. And if it meets that filter, let's go. Is there an example of a cultural moment, if you will, that you didn't and you regret? That we did with regret? That you did not get into, that you did not like on this wave, if you will. Not so much. I, you know, I, cause I feel there is, you know, I don't, I don't think there's one. There's one thing that I'll say that that sort of is why I'm, I'm stumped is because I think we live in a mentality of no regrets.

19:51I've always lived in that place. And so personally, I live in a place where if I see something, I'm like, oh, that's cool. I love that the brand did that. I love when Lego creates little Lego people and they walk around and, you know, and, but for us, it's, it's no regrets. We lean in and anything that we've had a thought where we're like, this is something there. If we know that our community is talking about it as well. And we know that it lives at an intersection and we're co-creating with our people. It doesn't even become a doubt. We just go for it. I love that. I absolutely love that. You know, where you mentioned, I'm paraphrasing, but you said something to the effect of, you understand the impact on culture the brand has.

20:31And one of the things that I preach and if I coach somebody or counsel someone, you know, a close cousin of that is responsibility. yeah and a brand and those who in charge of the brand have to understand yeah there come there has to be a sense of responsibility yeah when it comes to anything that impacts culture yeah and youth especially i love what you're saying that it's it's almost like cultivating cultural capital for us and one of the things for example that we've done where i feel we've thought about the impact that we can make that our platform has and how important that is is we started working on gamifying financial literacy on Roblox.

21:15There's a young community on there. And that was one way for us to think about how to actually create a sense of entrepreneurship, how to take the boldness that we have as a brand and allow that to extend into our community. And that's one piece of how we try to break through as well and bring it with meaningful. We also have an incredible purposeful, I would say purpose-led episodic series that we create called Show Yourself. And it is all around building and putting that platform that we already have, but putting a spotlight and shining that spotlight on individuals that are defying labels, that are defying the odds, that have stood up against bullies, that have actually stood up against labels that people have said to them, oh, well, you're a gay queer, so that's the box you live in.

22:03So you're going to stay right there. And we find that by doing that, it allows our community to feel seen in a world where everyone is just so ready to box you in based on your land and even the labels yourself. And what are you? Well, you're just you. Right. And what does that mean to be you? And when you actually get down to the color of what these individuals, these amazing heroes, I would say that we put in show yourself, they're saying the same thing that you and I would say to each other if we were sitting fireside. It's the same language. Maybe they just different. They just have a different story.

22:33They came to that fire differently. Right. Yeah. But they're still there. But they're still there. Yeah. And I think that's the really interesting part when we when we live at that intersection of heart and culture and being able to do entertainment in it. OK, I'm going to put you in front of a room of chief brain officers. Right. Hypothetically. Yeah. Across all different industries. And I take a question from the audience. And the first question is, Laurie, I love what you're saying. How do I know when to jump in? How do I know how to be relevant? culturally? How do I know? Because there are times in our industry of making widgets, I want to do something, but my team talks me out of it or it doesn't feel right.

23:13And then I see my competitor doing it and I kick myself. So ultimately where I'm going is what advice do you give to people in your same role to go, you got to just go, man, you got to feel, especially in AI, I already know this about you. You trust your gut. Yeah, there is a lot of trust your gut. And I think it's also, So you have to realize that your community, there's this real-time factor. And I said, I used that earlier when I was talking about Oliver and the lip gloss, the halo gloss lip gloss kit. You have to operate in real time because your community is in real time. I can't, it's hard for you to build something.

23:46And I've been part of brands that have done that as well, right? Very intentional, but intention doesn't mean that you need to take all that time to think about it. I think when you're living with your community and you're breathing, it's like an organism. You don't leave it. You got to operate in real time. You got to continue to fuel the fandom that you have. And for me, that also having a leadership team, having a culture, having the DNA of this brand, the origin story of this brand, live on this pathway, which is only one way. It's move forward and operate in real time. It's evolve or die.

24:21It's you've got to move quickly or you get left behind. Yeah. All of those notions for us, there's only one speed for us. It's a speed of moving of our community. How do you describe your relationship and how you work with the CMO? First of all, the CMO, I've known for a long time. And she is highly, highly respected by me and by every person in our organization. Our relationship is very, very, I would say organic in a way to use that word. We operate in a way that is very complementary. So our CMO has the responsibility of everything from end to end. So from product innovation to R &D and the alchemist who's creating the formulas, all the way to the person who is actually activating our social channels, all the way down to the person who's creating our cool calm strategy, everyone who's creating the branding, down to looking at our VM and looking at all of our visual merchandising and looking at all the points of sale.

25:24How do we look? How do we come across? Can our community find us? Is it easy? Have we lived on being positivity, inclusivity, accessibility? And our relationship is almost so symbolic in terms of being able to read each other really fast, especially at a company like this. You have to be able to do that, right? And brand is almost what I like to say. And she said it herself too. It's the brain and the heart of the organization. We release the signals and we pump the blood to all of the other organs in the organization in order for us to work together as an ecosystem, in order for us to be able to disrupt norms in real time and capture new fans together and to be able to put something out there that is going to delight our community.

26:05So it's probably one of the best working relationships I've ever had in my professional career. And it's because we trust each other. There's that little five letter word that the trust is there, right? And it's got to be mutual. And the trust is also across the entire organization. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's, that's fantastic. Listen, I, I knew this was going to get fly by and I'm going to end it with, I could do every episode with the random five, which you've, if you've heard any of my episodes, you know, it's coming. very five very random questions but i'm already knowing well you're you're we're gonna do a part two and a lot of other things because i think you're amazing i'm ready oh all right here we go you ready for the random five okay number one who's someone famous or not who's had a major impact on how you lead my father your father tell us my father yeah good human amazing man taught me everything I need to know about leadership, how to have a moral compass that doesn't sway from others.