Campaign Trail is our analysis of some of the best new creative efforts from the marketing world. View past columns in the archives here.
Judging by a recent crop of pieces about new trends drawn from covens, conjurings and crones, it must be the season of the witch. Add the latest campaign from E.l.f. Cosmetics to the wiccan zeitgeist: “The e.l.f.ing Magical Sisters” draws inspiration from the sisterly witches of “Charmed,” “Practical Magic” and other spooky hallmarks to promote the brand’s Soft Glam Cream Blush and Bronzer Stick products.
When crafting the campaign, E.l.f. relied on its deep connection to its community, using a listen-learn-lean in framework to turn insights into marketing that intersects with culture, explained Ashley Rosebrook, chief creative officer at the brand.
“Our community was already saying and telling us these [products] are so creamy, so blendable and so amazing — they're like magic,” Rosebrook said. “When they said that, it was an aha moment.”
The brand then connected the “magic” value proposition to nostalgia for the 90s and Y2K culture that is an obsession of Gen Z, a cohort with which E.l.f. overindexes. Beyond Gen Z, tapping into turn-of-the-millennium culture helps the brand engage with Gen Xers and millennials who were actually present during the era.
“‘Charmed’ was a key reference for us… that show was so much about female empowerment and sisterhood, and we wanted to do our own take on that,” Rosebrook said. “We love stretching the elasticity of the E.l.f. brand into other genres.”
A hero video, released Sept. 30, stars actors Priah Ferguson, Keyla Monterroso Mejia and Bebe Wood, best known for “Stranger Things,” “The Studio” and the 2024 version of “Mean Girls,” respectively, as sisters who think they have magical abilities due to the power of E.l.f. products.
Conceived by the company’s E.l.f. Made entertainment arm, the campaign was created in partnership with “Saturday Night Live” writer alum Anna Drezen and Hungryman Productions director Hannah Levy and is running across the brand’s owned channels including YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.
Made in-house
The campaign demonstrates the strengths of E.l.f. Made, the in-house entertainment operation that the company launched in 2024 to help the brand move with enough speed to engage with and shape pop culture, as it has attempted to do with several musical marketing efforts. In this case, the campaign arrived at the same time as spooky season, the release of “Practical Magic 2” and the Y2K nostalgia trend.
“It was the perfect intersection of all of these things, [and we could] bring the idea to life very quickly with relevant talent in a way that we thought was really timely,” said Rosebrook.
To nail the tone of "The e.l.f.ing Magical Sisters,” which updates nostalgia tropes while parodying Gen Z slang like “snatched” and “delulu,” E.l.f. relied on insights from talent on both sides of the camera, like Vice President and Creative Director Desi Gallegos and even Rosebrook’s 16-year-old daughter.
“We're always looking for what feels really authentic to what our community really says, and of course what the talent would say,” Rosebrook said. “They're all in the same community.”
The proof is in the potion, as it were: The campaign’s hero video was the brand’s most engaged Instagram post in September and delivered the brand's highest engagement rate for the month, per details shared by E.l.f. Half of purchasers of the Soft Glam Cream Blush and Bronzer Stick products are new to E.l.f., per internal sales data from May to September 2026 shared by the brand, and interest in the products — and the witching sisters — remains high.
“I love reading the comments on our socials. So many people were saying ‘give us the show please,’ like they wanted us to make it into a series,” Rosebrook said. “They were just so here for the whole concept, the cast and the humor — that's when we know we've hit the magic.”
