e.l.f. Beauty's Patrick O'Keefe on two truths about Gen Z's financial situation, leading into purpose and building community

Transcript

00:00You can hold opposing truths in your head at the same time about Gen Z right now, as we talked

00:06about, are set to inherit all this wealth, but right now they can't even afford eggs, nor that

00:12any of us can, really. But yeah, you know, just the crisis that we're in now, how do you get your

00:19head around that in this audience? Yeah, there's a word I'm going to use, it's called contradiction,

00:24and I think the word contradiction means so many different things to so many different people.

00:28This world is full of contradiction, but at ELF, we try not to be that word. We are what we call bold

00:37disruptors with a kind heart. We disrupt norms, we shape culture, and we connect communities, which

00:42is the framework in which we work and live every day. Why do I love that? I love that because we

00:48always lean into purpose, and Gen Z loves purpose. They love to understand what building a community,

00:54and I can give you one or two examples in our world in the immersive space with Roblox and Twitch.

01:00We just launched a financial literacy program today, which I'm super excited about. It's earn,

01:06learn, and flex. Did you get elf in there? Yeah, all right, super fun. And, you know, just a lot of

01:12the work that we're also doing with women in sports with Billie Jean King and Catherine Legg, Indie 500,

01:17our partnership with iHeart, which they're rock stars. We love them all. They're brilliant partners in the

01:22sense of really supporting women in sports. So when you find purpose as a company and you know what

01:28your brand stands for, we talk about the bullshit. We don't want to do bullshit. We want to make sure

01:34that we're standing up for what we believe, and sometimes it doesn't land. For example, when we

01:39stood up for women's reproductive rights, there's a world out there that does not believe in that,

01:45but we stood firm. Catherine Legg is part of, yeah, she's the fastest female driver last year

01:56in the Indie 500. This year she's going to be part of NASCAR. I would look her up right now because

02:01she's going through a tough time, and if we need to be supporting her as a woman, as the only woman

02:06in this space. So again, those are the moments that we support, and you know, 77% of young girls

02:13are being bullied on Twitch. We created a channel called ElfU. Basically, it's a FU to anyone that

02:20wants to bully someone, and we want to show up loud and proud, create a safe space for women to do

02:25makeup, and also game because there's a lot of badass gamers out there that are women. So again,

02:30it's purpose. It's community. Those are the things that we lean into every day, and I'm super proud of

02:36the work we're doing.