Earned Podcast: Micah Jesse Koffler, Global Director, Influencer & Creator Marketing, e.l.f. Beauty Company
What if your closest competitor sells cars? That's how e.l.f. Cosmetics thinks about its place in a customer's day, and it shapes everything the team does with creators. In this live Earned recording from CreatorIQ Connect, Joy Osinloye sits down with Micah Jesse Koffler, known inside e.l.f. as "Magic Micah." Micah manages a team of four, and his career spans a global beer company, food and beverage, and years of correspondent work and red carpet events.
The throughline of the conversation is that creator marketing works best when it feels personal at every size. You'll hear how Micah's team ran 135 campaigns in a year and kept each one distinct, how a pickle-flavored lip balm drew four-hour lines at two state fairs, and how e.l.f. brought 50 creators to Coachella and Stagecoach without paying any of them to attend. Let's dive in.
Micah describes e.l.f. as an entertainment company that happens to sell amazing products, and that framing changes who counts as competition. L'Oréal and Maybelline share the shelf, and the store next door might be a car dealer or a music shop. The goal is to be part of the conversation in the morning, at night, on weekends, and in the everyday routines where people talk about a favorite car or a favorite meal.
Affordability anchors that goal. e.l.f. makes products that are accessible and respect a customer's values and wallet. Micah is open about the scoreboard too. The team has reached the No. 1 spot in Earned Media Value (EMV), currently sits at No. 3, and keeps its eye on the top.
With a new product launching almost every week, how do you keep 135 campaigns from feeling like copies of each other? Micah's team starts with the product, then asks who is best placed to tell its story. A simple rule guides the mix: about 60–70% of creators in a campaign come from the trusted group with a loud, reliable voice, and the remaining 30–40% are net new audiences.
The Glow Reviver Melting Lip Balm in Pickle shows the model at work. Existing creators who love pickles received the PR box and reacted with delight. The team then went looking for pickle enthusiasts and ASMR fans who love the sound of a snapping pickle. Micah says every launch is a chance to find micro and sub-micro communities, then call the creator who holds authority there and let them know a lip balm exists with their audience in mind.
e.l.f. became the first beauty brand sponsor in 20 years at both the Texas State Fair and the Minnesota State Fair, and the response surprised even the team. Lines for a free lip balm ran four hours. Micah says that turnout showed him the community felt seen, since a beauty brand had shown up in what he calls a beauty desert. e.l.f. stands for every eye, lip, and face, and he says that means showing up wherever communities celebrate their own culture, from Coachella to the state fair.
The creator plan stayed light. The team flew Bigfoot Bae, who appeared in the e.l.f. hair commercial, to Minnesota, and sent Yana Jenkins, a Texas native, to join the live stream. The team expected around 25 local creators in Minnesota and met 175. Many had no tie to beauty and simply loved state fairs. Micah says the room looked like the same community e.l.f. reaches in LA.
A welcome evening with long-term partners at People magazine the night before gave creators a chance to meet each other, so everyone had a friend at a fair that draws 2 million visitors and has almost no cell service.
Fans in Brazil had asked for e.l.f. for years, and the Sephora partnership there took about a year to land. In the U.S., e.l.f. is available at Ulta and at drugstores like CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart. In Mexico and Brazil, it's on Sephora's shelves.
For the Brazil launch, Micah's team used a 90/10 split. 90% of creators were based in Brazil, with audiences concentrated there. The other 10% were Brazilian creators living in the U.S., whose more diverse audiences include fans who appreciate their Brazilian roots. The story was simple: e.l.f. is finally in Sephora, and a favorite creator's pick is waiting in São Paulo or Rio.
Micah calls the approach crawl, walk, run. Jelly Pop was the first step into fragrance, and the community loved it. That success led to e.l.f. Pop, a whole world built around a body mist and a fictional holiday town in Norway, e.l.f. Pop Tromsø, that smells of Bundt cake, cinnamon, and cardamom.
Hair called for more homework. Micah says he had plenty to learn about hair types one through four, from 4A to 4C, and about the heat, tension, braids, and sew-ins that shape how people style. Before any paid content, the team seeded the entire line and invited creators to test it over time and in different climates. They researched each creator's hair type and routine, then invited the partners who told the story best to go deeper. One of them is Yana J., who appeared in the e.l.f. commercial and continues to partner with the brand year-round. Hair is also Micah's favorite launch of the year, because it introduced his team to a new group of creators.
For Coachella and Stagecoach, e.l.f. served as official cosmetics partner and ranked as the No. 3 most talked-about brand. Micah credits the creator strategy for that result. Across three weekends, the team brought 50 top e.l.f.ies to and from the desert. Each day began with breakfast, followed by a wrapped bus with a karaoke machine, branded blankets, and pillows. Along the way, the team surprised creators with In-N-Out, and halfway there, an Ulta shopping spree. At the hotel, each creator found an Aura digital frame preloaded with photos and videos from past work with e.l.f.
No creator was paid to attend. Manny MUA, Laura Lee, and the Goddess Boys joined because they trusted e.l.f. to plan every detail and look after them. Micah's advice for scaling while keeping your identity is to approach each moment from a fresh angle. At Coachella, e.l.f. knew it was competing with the biggest brands, and VIP tickets were on the table for everyone. For a drugstore brand built around community, a wrapped bus with a karaoke machine felt right. He also recommends a mix of longtime creators who know the brand and newer faces who add a little disruption, and a reminder that no year repeats, even at the same festival.
Micah started as an early blogger working alongside broadcast media, magazines, and newspapers, so he treats creators the way he'd want to be treated. Would he want a 40-page brief? Would he want to promote a product he hasn't tried? He answers no to both. His team approaches creators with empathy, mindfulness, and kindness, and e.l.f. practices what it calls zero distance, which Micah describes as the space between those highest in power in the community. A birthday cake, or at least a sweet text message, is part of the routine, and Micah sees that level of care as a real differentiator.
One story captures the idea. When a top e.l.f.ie mentioned growing up watching NASCAR with his dad, the team arranged a trip to the Indy 500. The creator's dad couldn't make it in person and joined on FaceTime the entire time. Joy adds that moments like this compound. Creators who feel valued stay loyal to a brand over competitors, and the return flows both ways.
That philosophy shapes how e.l.f. chooses partners. Asked to pick between a creator with 10 million followers and one with 10,000 followers who is obsessed with e.l.f., Micah picks the 10,000 every time and calls that devotion "elfinity." His one-sentence advice for every brand: treat creators as the cultural forces that they are.
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