How e.l.f. Cosmetics’ courtroom drama gave us a new way to help us judge real beauty
Winning Fashion and Beauty Gold in The Drum Awards for Marketing Americas is e.l.f. Beauty. Here is the award-winning case study.
Objective
e.l.f. Cosmetics is a brand by the community, for the community, and inspired by the community. The key to our success lies in prioritizing our audience before content. We listened, learned, and leaned into the cultural zeitgeist to shape our second big game commercial, focusing on surprising and delighting our community. This led us to the perfect trifecta, tapping into the popularity of courtroom dramas, a leading trend on TV.
Strategy and Insight
We established e.l.f. Court as the ideal creative universe to showcase the brand’s core value of accessible, cruelty-free makeup for every eye, lip, and face. Presiding over our world of lustrous justice was the Honorable Judge Beauty, portrayed by the iconic Judge Judy Sheindlin herself. We populated the courtroom with a diverse cast of cultural icons to bring the proceedings to life.
Judge Beauty emerged as the ideal creative playground to defend e.l.f. ’s case for quality and affordable cosmetics, putting an end to overspending on foundation and sentencing the world to $14 radiant skin with e.l.f.’s best-selling Halo Glow Liquid Filter.
Execution
With 2023’s record-shattering resurgence of Suits, the world’s continued fascination with Judge Judy Sheindlin in her Emmy award-winning series Judy Justice, and the widespread viral sensation of Jury Duty memes - it became evident that courtroom drama was experiencing a renewed and captivating presence in culture.
Discussions within the beauty community comparing cosmetic quality and price is an ongoing discussion. Tapping into the cultural conversation that overpriced makeup is a prosecutable offense allowed us to flawlessly share and show e.l.f.’s values.
We leaned into characters across cultural genres - a meaningful something-for-everyone approach that reflects both the brand’s community and its vision that beauty belongs everywhere. We tapped the most beloved personalities in the legal drama space – like Judge Judy, Suits trio of talent, and Ronald Gladden from Jury Duty – and mixed them up with viral creators, beauty personalities, football players, musicians and drag artists for a truly head-spinning talent mix. The commercial was directed by beloved comedic actor, writer and director, Zach Woods, best known for his roles on HBO's ‘Silicon Valley’ and NBC’s sitcom sensation “The Office.”
The campaign transcended a singular 30 + 60-second spot, weaving an immersive narrative through episodic teasers leading up to and following the main event. Leveraging both hero and episodic content, we strategically expanded our reach, captivating attention from the outset and maintaining interest throughout the campaign's life cycle. From the two-day shoot, we produced over 30 distinct pieces of content, ensuring a consistent flow of engaging visuals across brand and talent channels for months to come.
Results
Social media played a pivotal role in extending the impact of our campaign far beyond traditional TV screens. From collaborating with influencers like Benny Drama who helped navigate followers through our social campaign to tapping into our additional stars to tease the launch including Gina Torres, Rick Hoffman, Sarah Rafferty, Meghan Trainor, Ronald Gladden, Heidi N Closet and Emmanuel Acho built excitement. As the big game approached, we capitalized on the power of meme culture by partnering with content mavens like Beige Cardigan, Dudette with Sign, and FJerry. Their humorous and shareable content ignited conversations across social media platforms, amplifying awareness for Judge Beauty and reinforcing our campaigns’ core message. Our rollout strategy remained strong following the big game strategically partnering with our cast to release a steady stream of creative assets, leveraging the extended three-month usage term with our partners. This deliberate and cohesive narrative kept our audience engaged and connected long after the initial buzz had faded, demonstrating the enduring impact of our campaign strategy.
Through a strategic multi-pronged PR plan, we generated 103 billion impressions across ad trade, business, lifestyle, entertainment and beauty media. With a four-pulse approach, which included an ad buy and director announcement, partial cast teaser reveal, spot announcement roll out and post-game success storytelling, the campaign exceeded all previous brand benchmarks, becoming a cultural phenomenon that flooded the feeds leading up to, and well-after, Super Bowl Sunday.
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