Pia Barlow, Executive Vice President, Originals Marketing, HBO Max, Warner Media
Mandy Fields, Senior Vice President and CFO, e.l.f.Beauty
Dede Raad, Founder, Dress Up Buttercup
Moderator: Lindsey Stanberry, Executive Editor, FORTUNE; Co-chair, Fortune MPW Next Gen 

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Connecting With Consumers 

Conferences

Pia Barlow, HBO Max, Warner Media
Mandy Fields, e.l.f.Beauty
Dede Raad, Dress Up Buttercup
Lindsey Stanberry, Fortune MPW Next Gen 

So as we heard from the last conversation, having a clear vision and understanding of your target audience is key in fostering a community. These next leaders are innovating and changing the dynamics of how they are connecting with their consumers. So Pia Barlow is executive vice president for originals marketing at HBO Max. Soon to be Max. She led the charge on a $100 million marketing campaign for House of Dragon that reached more than 130 million people. Mandy Fields. Isn't your typical CFO? She works closely with her C to invest in marketing and it's working. Elf has seen 16 consecutive quarters of growth in last quarter alone. Net sales jumped 49% to over $146 million. And last Didi Rad known by her social media community as dress up Buttercup chose to pave a different route than most influencers rather than creating a clothing line or DTC company. Rad used her audience to create an angel investor pitch series where she connects small brain with potential investors. Please welcome hbo's Pia Barlow Mandy Fields and Fortune's 2021 creator, 25 honoree Didi Rad interviewed by Fortune's executive editor and NP nextgen, co chair Lindsay Stanbury. Thank you all for joining us today. I'm so excited about this panel. I want to kick things off. Amber mentioned the big rebrand HBO Max. Now we're just calling it Max. How does that impact your work? What are the challenges of coming up against a rebrand like that? Of course, I mean, I will say from a content marketing approach, right? Marketing or HBO content and Mac content, it's not necessarily going to change per se, right? More than anything it's going to evolve just as consumer audience and viewership habits uh evolve and continue to evolve. Um I think our approach is very similar to the HBO programming approach, which is always about groundbreaking, innovative storytelling and quality premium um storytelling and that's exactly what we're going to continue to do. But I think when you think about Macs as a rebrand, I think that the, the very reason for it is largely uh that we acknowledge that there was a lot of people, a lot of audiences who have decided that HBO wasn't for them. And so I think this rebrand is about signaling a change to say that it is important that new subscribers know that we have a broader content offering, right? So it's not just HBO content and max content, we are expanding the offering to include all other genres and categories. When you think about it, there's also lifestyle brands that encourages more lean back viewing as well as kids content that for families, depending on your mood and your need date. So it's really a broader offering for everybody. It sounds really exciting. Mandy Elf had a Super Bowl commercial this year with Jennifer Coolidge. It's very funny. I went and watched it for this panel. How did that come together? And how did that help you connect with a new audience? Yeah, sure. So, yes, we did. It was our first commercial ever actually that we did for the big game. Technically, we were not sponsors of the Super Bowl. So we cannot say that we had a Super Bowl ad but uh it was really inspired by our community. Uh You know, we're the number one beauty brand with Gin Z. They love Jennifer Coolidge. They also love our Power Grip primer, which was the highlight of the uh of the ad. Um And it was super sticky and we looked across all of these viral videos on tiktok of consumers or our community really sticking things to their hands, sticking stuff to their faces. And we said, huh, how can we take the stickiest primer out there? Number one primer in the US and couple it with the stickiest cultural icon right now was Jennifer Coolidge. Um and bring those two together and believe it or not, we brought it to life in less than three weeks. And uh you know, the intro, they said that I have a very close relationship with my CMO I have often talked that she is my B F F in the organization. Uh And it all started with a phone call, she called me and said, hey, I wanna do a Super Bowl ad and I said, what, what, what are you talking about? Um And it was like three weeks until, and we had to get an extension to get the ad to the networks. And so it was really a labor of love, but really we say that when the stars align, there's no stopping you. And so really being tapped into your community and being able to move quickly to capture those cultural moments is super important. So that's how we brought the Super Bowl ad to life. I love that they came, it was inspired by tiktok videos. That's amazing. Did d as we mentioned, you made Fortune's first list of creators in 2020 and you have grown this huge audience. Obviously, creator marketing is a big thing. I'm curious how do creators help brands build trust with their audiences? So I believe trust is like the number one key of creating a successful social media platform. I get to be the storyteller. I get to share real life stories about like the primer grip or things like that, that I get to bring to real life. So being able to partner with brands, I, I have a trusting audience that is there for me. That wants to know, like, I think of it as like I'm sitting on a couch with a girlfriend. We're having a glass of wine and what do we like? What do we have in common? What do we like to share about our favorite lip gloss or a parenting tip or something like that? So, um it's not only trust but just being genuine and authentic to my audience has really helped like, take it to the next level of um that trust building that we have together. I'm gonna open it up to a few questions in a couple of minutes. So all of you start thinking about your questions. Um Where do you all see the creator marketing industry going from here? You know, it's not a new thing but the platforms are continually to evolve. I'm curious what you're seeing and excited about. I mean, I can start, I think for us and everything you're saying didi about that trust building, I think particularly for younger audiences, like the Gen Z audience, I think, you know, for them. And I, and I just heard this literally in the green room that um the gen Z audiences, right? They, they trust creators and influencers more than they do. They even family and I have that experience at home with my kids. And so for us and, and when I think about shows that we're working on whether especially for younger audiences, whether it's gossip girl or pretty little liars that we did. A big part of what we needed to do was engender that trust with the original, the O G IP fans and make sure that they know that we are not going to ruin their precious IP or the precious show or, or the characters that they fell in love with. And so we'll typically reach out to creators to make sure that hey, we want to know, we want to be able to pass a torch from the new, the, the older generation to the new generation who are the fans that we know and how make sure that we're tapping into their, their communities, their fandoms who they believe in and they trust and make sure that we're partnering on getting them access, making sure that they feel like we're doing the show justice, especially for the new generation. Yeah, for sure. And especially for e I mean, creators play a big role in all that we do and I think you said it right, like Gin Z especially, they are all about authenticity. They can smell BS from a mile away. So you have to be authentic to the brand to what you're putting out there because they won't want to come and we talk a lot about community because we don't even, you know, we don't even talk product, we're selling a product, we talk about building things for our community to participate in. And it's no coincidence that we're a number one beauty brand with Gen Z because we create that atmosphere. I mean, our mission is to bring the best of beauty to every eye lip and face and we live that out in everything that we do every day. Did. You've really done that building community with dress up butter cup. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I feel like I there's a time in our lives where people just want a relationship or want like something that they're familiar with. And so for me, like, even postpartum, I went in going like, have my first child. I thought I was going to wear jeans, going home and little did I know that I'm in a diaper and I should probably be in like a dress or something. But I was able to open up to my community and just really show them that like, I'm also going the same stage as you. Like, a lot of my followers are 25 to 32 age range that are going to go through that. And so for me to open up, it really has helped them create that like community and it's not just a community, it's a loyal community that I've really realized that we have. Um But the more you open up, like even in a friendship, like I mentioned, the more you open up to a friend, the more they're gonna trust you and want to like, get to know you better. That's kind of what I found. Any questions. Do you mind standing up? Hello. My name is Anzai Capra and I have a question specifically about HBO. Um I love all of your shows. I find myself watching them and looking forward to watching them every Sunday. I'm curious to know how you all have thought intentionally about mixing both live elements of television with streaming because it does feel like you have that consistency from live television and the buzz that's created by releasing of episodes. That's a great, great question and something that we are definitely looking into it won't be part of our Mac launch that's happening next week. However, I think you hit the nail on the head about, you know, live being a component of getting people constantly coming back in because you know HBO while we, you know, we like to think that Sunday is our night, we want to make sure that for Mac, we are extending it more broadly. So whether it is live at some point in the future or more lean back reality kind of content or food content or even documentaries that there is that repeat behavior of coming back into the week every day. So more to come. Speaking of drawing and consumers, Mandy Glossier was talking, the CEO of Gaia was talking earlier about how they're opening a bunch of um physical locations. What is the plan with that? Yeah. So we actually used to have our own branded Elf stores and we closed all 20 some stores back in 2019. And the reason we did that is because one we wanted to invest behind our marketing and digital. So at that time in early 2019, we were investing maybe 6 to 7% of our net sales behind marketing and digital. Fast forward to today were 17 to 19% of our net sales behind marketing and digital. And really, that was enabled by closing those stores. We, it's a much better that we're seeing. And in fact, because we were a wholesale, we have wholesale partners with Target Walmart drug channel alta, I mean, they have way more doors than we could have ever created on our own. And so it's worked out much better for us and focusing on wholesale as our strategy, as well as the e commerce space. Yeah, I was on a target recently and it was all out really amazing. Um What are you seeing? You know, there's a lot of old tricks, there's new tricks. What, what kind of branding, reaching consumer like doesn't work anymore that just like needs to like go out the window that you're so tired of seeing. Oh my gosh. Well, there's a lot in beauty. I mean, there's a whole uh movement right now um of kind of redefining or unefon what beauty is. I was just at W W D last week. Um And you heard a lot of these CEO S talk about that in the beauty industry. And I think that uh a lot of our retailers are also going in that direction. Um Some of the drug channel, for example, you can't put pictures out that have been retouched anymore. If you're going to put something on P OS, it has to be completely unretouched. So it was really a movement of people just embracing who they are as they are and you know, not selling people on the idea of what they could look like, but just really embracing and celebrating who people are. No unretouched photos. And how far we've come, I think in the world of show marketing, if I can just add, um I think it really depends, right? I think trends and tactics are all pretty cyclical and it really depends on the show for us. And so there's something where we may actually, you know, use celestial radio in some cases because that is like that is right for that audience. And really, so it really depends for us. There's no, I won't throw anything out of the playbook, but I will say the overly produced materials like you always need a trailer, right? You'll always need that kind of material to make sure you're engaging. But outside of that, um it is the reactive more, hey, listen to the community, listen to what they want, react and market to the speed of culture is really what's driving that kind of engagement with us. I will say for the creative space I have, I love being able to try trends and my audience will immediately tell me like, oh no. Yeah, I thought about that like 2020 when we all were dancing on Tik Tok. Um I found that that was, wasn't, you know what my audience wanted and I look at analytics a lot, but then I was able to get rid of me are very popular right now because people just want to see the process. So before I would just share, here's what I'm wearing to the conference, but now I'm able to be like, this is my options. These are my shoe options and really get my audience involved. Um And that trend I've seen really do well for me. So in the space, I think that's it. Any other questions I wanna make sure you will get a chance to ask. OK, I'm curious, the top topic of this conference today so far, what are you seeing? Is it that they're interested in? Do you think it's harder to reach them? You know, I think in some ways we think of them as a monolith, but they're actually a pretty diverse and interesting um generation. I think social media is like the best way to get a hold of them. Like Amber said earlier on the panel, like 92% are shoppers through social media. Um But I also feel like there's different platforms to create and like cover their audience and their trust. Um For me, like tiktok obviously is like the biggest one that you would see. Now there's new platforms coming out like lemonade or be real or anything like that. Um that you're able to just share who you are as a person and then really captivate like you will be your audience in your customer. Yeah. And it's interesting at, at that conference I was at last week. Um they actually had a, a presenter. It's a Gen Z created company um called consulting. And they uh connect with other companies and tell them how to reach Gen Z. And I found it so interesting because he described how Gen Z has really grown up kind of inside of their device and they actually are seeking experiences that happen outside of that device. So yes, they like a curated picture and they like all of this, but in reality, outside of that device, they're looking for more opportunities to engage with people and communicate and have that community outside of the device. And I feel like so many just focus so much on you gotta, you gotta get them drawn in, you got to get on Instagram, you gotta be on tiktok. We love Tik Tok but also reach them outside and really speaking to them about the things that they care about is super important as well. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think that that mix of being on social media of course, but coupling that with some I RL experiences because what they want is a real connection, right? They want to feel something real. And so I think for us the way to reach them is to just let them know that we understand them and that, you know, we we we understand what they care about where they are spending time and engaging them in that real way. And so whether it is a 1 to 1 communication or a one to many, I think some acknowledgement that we see them and you know, whether it's sending them for succession a fuck off sweatshirt or um or even with um you know, gossip girl, right? Um We uh we created a um a sort of like an insider com, we partner with community to do uh 1 to 1 communication as if you were an insider with gossip girl and you were getting these updates. And so it meant that you were getting some access and you would get us something, whether it's something real or something more digital but was still a relationship that, that you built. So we have two minutes left really quickly down the line. What are like the trends that you just, you don't want to see anymore? Like you've tried it. It's like it's, it's done like if it never like sur surfaced again, you would be so relieved. Oh God. Um It's funny you say the tiktok dances. I thought that was my, that I do think that, that, that, that moment is over. Yeah. Yeah. Some people are good at it. Some people are thriving. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is funny to me when I talk to people about Tik Tok, they often think it's about the dancing and I'm like, do you use Tik Tok? Yeah. Interesting. Because that's how we got our first start into Tik Tok. Yeah. We created a song called Eyes with Space and had the whole thing and yeah, but no dance. Yeah. Yeah. But that's how we got our start. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you all so much for joining us today. It was wonderful having you. Thank you. Thank you.