E.L.F. Apologizes for That Matt Rife Ad, Explains His Hiring

Matt Rife and Heidi N Closet of “e.l.f.ino & Schmarnes.”
Photo: e.l.f. Cosmetics via YouTube

Another day, another news cycle about an ad. On August 11, E.L.F. Cosmetics debuted a law-themed ad campaign that features Matt Rife, the controversial comedian who apparently now owns the Annabelle doll. We’re not talking about mascara products when we say that customers responded by lashing out. E.L.F. has since issued a statement acknowledging that it “missed the mark,” and the beauty brand’s global chief marketing officer has done press explaining why the company hired Rife in the first place. Will it be enough to make up with its target audience?

Comedian Matt Rife and drag queen Heidi N Closet star as “affordable beauty attorneys” at the law offices of “e.l.f.ino & Schmarnes,” a parody of the now-defunct New York personal-injury law firm Cellino & Barnes. “I know a thing or two about red flags,” Rife says as Schmarnes. “And pricey makeup? You deserve better than that.” The pair encourages potential clients to report “beauty injustices” by calling 1-855-COLD-HARD-LASH.

The campaign also included by an August 13 pop-up that was designed to channel the ad and look like the inside of a courthouse. The event — which teased an appearance from Heidi N Closet in character as e.l.fino — drew more than 1,100 people, according to the Business of Fashion.

They don’t think Matt Rife should’ve made partner at this firm, considering a controversial domestic-violence joke he made in his 2023 Netflix special Natural Selection. Many people online argued that hiring Rife goes against E.L.F.’s stated values and target audience. On TikTok, beauty influencer Nikkietutorials declared, “aaaaaaandddd you lost me… Matt Rife out of ALL people? 😟 so disappointed.” Underneath Diet Prada’s post about the controversy, Selling Sunset’s Chrishell Stause wondered, “Was literally no one else available..?”

He opened his 2023 special by recalling a time when he saw a hostess with a black eye at a restaurant in Baltimore (a city he described as “ratchet”). When the person he was dining with wondered why the hostess wasn’t working in the kitchen so that customers didn’t see her bruise, Rife replied, “Yeah, but I feel like if she could cook, she wouldn’t have that black eye.” He then suggested he was testing his audience to see if they were going to “be fun or not,” explaining, “I figure if we start the show with domestic violence, the rest of the show should be smooth sailing.” Following subsequent online backlash to the joke, he doubled down by posting an Instagram Story that directed anyone “offended” by any of his jokes to a link to purchase special-needs helmets.

E.L.F. had seen success this summer with its Sunhinged special, in which comedians “roasted” the sun to promote its SPF skin-care collection, so it wanted to keep the comedy streak going — and the beauty company genuinely thought Rife would be a good pick. E.L.F.’s global chief marketing officer, Kory Marchisotto, told the Business of Fashion that Rife’s TikTok audience is 80 percent female and 75 percent under the age of 34, which she said was “so right in the sweet spot” considering the company’s target audience of Gen-Z women. His community engagement was 80 percent positive when the ad was being planned, she added. But the development of the campaign didn’t necessarily include digging that deeply into Rife’s controversial past jokes: “We [are] very much known for operating in real time, that’s what it means to be in the cultural Zeitgeist,” Marchisotto said. “So we’re not looking in the rearview mirror when we’re operating the real-time marketing machine.”

“Obviously we’re very surprised,” Marchisotto told the Business of Fashion. “There is a big gap between our intention and how this missed the mark for some people … We always aim to deliver positivity, and this one didn’t. So we find ourselves in a position where, quite honestly, that doesn’t feel good for us.” E.L.F. also acknowledged that it had “missed the mark with people we care about in our E.L.F. community” in an Instagram post shared on August 13, two days after the ad went live. The statement, which affirmed that the campaign had been intended to “humorously spotlight beauty injustice,” kept the law-firm bit going by announcing that e.l.f.ino & Scharnes was closing. Do we think Heidi got any severance pay?