Earned Podcast: Jen Cho, Chief Customer Officer at CreatorIQ hosts Katie O'Reilly, EVP & Managing Director, North America at KIKO Milano
The creator economy has moved from a marketing channel to a boardroom conversation. Few executives illustrate that shift as clearly as Katie O'Reilly.
On this episode of Earned, CreatorIQ Chief Customer Officer Jen Cho sits down with Katie O'Reilly, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of North America at KIKO Milano. O'Reilly has built her career across nearly every major function in beauty, including merchant, marketer, and general manager roles at Macy's, MAC, and now KIKO Milano. That breadth, paired with bold personal bets like relocating to Dubai, has shaped how she leads a brand scaling its Italian heritage into the American market.
At the center of the conversation is a simple idea: the customer now drives the decisions that brands used to make alone. O'Reilly explains how that shift changes leadership, how one creator's unscripted video became a measurable sales driver, and how KIKO is building physical retail as an extension of its creator strategy.
O'Reilly sees a close connection between what's asked of executives and what's asked of creators.
"When I walk into my office, I check myself at the door," she says. Bringing the most authentic version of herself to the table is the foundation for how she engages with her team and partners, who she describes as being like family.
In O'Reilly's view, leadership today happens in real time and in public, with little room for coasting on reputation alone.
She calls it a simple exchange: show up, mean well, do well, and people give that back to you.
O'Reilly's career has been defined by non-obvious calls, most notably her choice to move to Dubai instead of accepting a promotion at Macy's.
She describes herself using two traits: being a driver, and being a calculated risk taker. Bold moves, in her view, work when they're paired with common sense and business judgment.
That framework extends directly to how she thinks about the creator economy, where old playbooks increasingly fail to apply. Waiting for certainty, she argues, carries its own risk.
Her advice to herself and her teams is unambiguous: those who hesitate get left behind.
The clearest proof point O'Reilly offers for creator-led marketing is the "Get Saucy" campaign built around KIKO's Unlimited Double Touch lipstick.
The program began with small, intimate dinners designed to build authentic relationships with creators. One attendee, Kripa Patel-Joshi, had already been using the product on her own before the campaign existed. She later filmed what became known as the "straw test," demonstrating the product's long-wear formula in a simple, unscripted video.
Other creators picked it up, stitched it, and pressure-tested it themselves. The moment generated what O'Reilly describes as millions of dollars in Earned Media Value (EMV), and she says the conversation carried through to sales, though she didn't share a specific figure.
For O'Reilly, that combination is the real signal: conversation that translates into sales, not just buzz for its own sake. She calls it the single most exciting example of the creator economy coming to life for KIKO this year.
O'Reilly is clear-eyed about how creator selection has changed at KIKO. The brand watches its audience closely and lets that response guide who it partners with.
"We choose the ones that love us as much as we love them," she says, "because our audience, our consumer, votes yes to them." That means watching which creators organically and naturally gravitate toward the brand, favoring partnerships that feel genuine over ones that feel forced.
Listening has become a literal daily habit. O'Reilly says she reads comments on KIKO's posts and on conversations relevant to the brand, treating that feedback as the clearest signal of whether the company is getting things right.
She frames the shift plainly: years ago, the brand was always right. Social media has changed that.
KIKO's expansion strategy leans directly into its heritage. The brand's recent Macy's launch, with Madonna as global brand ambassador, is one example of translating "the essence of Italianness" for an American audience while keeping the brand's core identity intact.
That same philosophy extends to KIKO's ongoing collaboration with Marcelo Gutierrez, Madonna's makeup artist, whose high-fashion, editorial work gets adapted into wearable tips for everyday consumers across KIKO's social channels.
O'Reilly describes a simple filter the team applies to every opportunity: does it fit the "KIKO lens"? When it does, the team says yes. When it doesn't, they say no, regardless of how appealing the opportunity might otherwise seem.
With KIKO's Soho flagship opening as the brand's next chapter of U.S. expansion, O'Reilly is positioning physical retail as a creator and content engine.
The store will include a dedicated space the team calls "the back room," designed to host creators, celebrities, and friends of the brand as they create content and weigh in on upcoming collections in real time.
O'Reilly expects the space to power everyday content formats, including get-ready-with-me videos, shop-along content, and creators simply spending time in the store, turning the physical location into a living, ongoing source of material.
O'Reilly's core advice to marketing leaders working with creators is blunt: "Listen. Close your mouth, open your ears, pay attention. They have extraordinary value and insight to share."
That's a useful test for any team building a creator program. Before locking in a media plan or a target reach number, spend time in the comments, in the DMs, and at the dinner table with the creators already choosing your brand on their own. The data on who your audience already loves is usually sitting in plain sight. O'Reilly's version of KIKO's growth started with paying attention to it first, and built the strategy around what she found.
And explore more conversations with the leaders shaping creator marketing on the Earned podcast hub.
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