Drunk Elephant founder on the skincare brand's Gen Alpha controversy

If you’ve entered a Sephora store, a middle school or the rabbit hole that is the skincare side of TikTok at any point over the past few weeks, you’ve probably heard about the Drunk Elephant craze. If not, here’s the gist: The skincare brand, which Shiseido acquired in 2019, has sold products including a wrinkle-reducing $74 retinol cream for more than a decade. But in late 2023, Drunk Elephant rose to the top of preteen holiday wish lists, and many parents weren’t exactly thrilled. Beyond the expensive prices, they worried about how safe the ingredients in some of the products, including retinol and acids, are for children’s skin. Most recently, a series of TikTok videos have gone viral about the Drunk Elephant kids storming Sephora stores, speaking rudely to employees and destroying displays. @trevvvvor POV: 11 year olds shopping at sephora for drunk elephant💀#pov #sephora #drunkelephant #skincare ♬ original sound - Trevor Dean Sign up for Ad Age newsletters From influencer marketing to agencies, get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox Click here Tiffany Masterson—who founded Drunk Elephant in 2013 as she struggled with adult skin issues—has been relatively quiet about the brand’s moment in the spotlight, outside of a Dec. 8 Instagram post on the brand’s account regarding the matter captioned with her initials and appearing on a single podcast. But in an interview with Ad Age this week, Masterson shared her perspective in detail, including answering if the brand intentionally marketed its product to children, what she’s doing about the Sephora craze, as well as what’s next for the brand. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Drunk Elephant (@drunkelephant) This interview has been edited for length and clarity. At what point did you first start to notice this influx of younger teenagers and preteens interested in the brand? For me, personally in my world, it’s always been that way because I had four teenagers as the brand was growing, so I could see the excitement from their friends. But now it’s that times a million because TikTok gives it such a large platform. I think TikTok pushed it over the edge, but that feels like it’s been in the last two years or so. I don’t think it’s such a new thing with kids wanting nice things that are expensive and that are out of their reach. It’s loud now and it’s public now, with I think Alix Earle, Kourtney Kardashian’s child and Kim Kardashian’s daughter getting on social media and posting about Drunk Elephant. Old people want to be younger, younger people want to be older. It’s a strange idea to me that a brand can’t be for all ages and for everybody. I think there’s a lot of pushback on that. If parents want to choose Drunk Elephant for their kids, it’s our job and our duty to make sure that they’re choosing the right products. So we’ll continue to educate on that. We truly didn’t see this coming, but we’re trying to handle it. As far as your influencer program goes, it sounds like you’ve always been sending the product out to creators, but at what point did you guys start doing more serious influencer partnerships where there were payments and contracts involved? I want to say two years ago. But that’s definitely a newer thing for us since acquisition. Do you know the youngest influencer that you’ve gifted the products to? We did send products to Kim and Kourtney Kardashian, and we wrote their daughter’s names on the note. But officially, we don’t gift under 18. [Editor’s note: Kim Kardashian’s daughter North and Kourtney Kardashian’s daughter Penelope are both under 13. Masterson later clarified that Drunk Elephant sent "kid-appropriate products, not the acids or retinols."] That was because their daughters were posting on their social media about your product? And so you sent the product to their moms and them? Yes. Around that time I had to meet with all of these editors, and every one of them had something to say about the kids putting the brand on their Christmas lists. I started getting those three, four years ago from friends who were, “look at this, you’re on my niece’s Christmas list,” that kind of thing. But it wasn’t all the time. And then it started being a thing on TikTok. Then people were like, “I can’t believe kids are asking for Drunk Elephant.” It was sort of percolating around September, October, November. And then it just reached this high fever pitch around December. There was a dermatologist who posted a video that went viral—someone had reached out to me on DM and said this dermatologist had posted this video and that it was all about how dangerous Drunk Elephant was, and how we were targeting children and don’t ever use Drunk Elephant. And they were saying that some of your products weren’t safe for kids? They were saying that we were going after kids and targeting them with retinols and acids. And that went viral, and really just blew everything up, maybe a month or two ago. A few similar incidents were really what made me go to my team and say, “I really want to come out and clear this up.” Right now, it feels like children are the largest and loudest proponents of this brand. But from everything you’ve said, it sounds like that wasn’t intentional. The truth is never quite as interesting as what you read on social media, but really, there’s not an effort on our part to target or make money off kids or anything like that. The answer’s no, we’ve never attempted to target children in any way and would not. If a parent chooses to buy Drunk Elephant, we want to make sure they buy something that’s appropriate. We’re really sitting in a reactive position. People want me to just do a kids line and a teenage line, that’s what I’m hearing right now. Is that something that you’ve thought about? I don’t know if we take that step, or if we just stay Drunk Elephant and keep doing what we’re doing. We have not made any decision about making new lines yet. The latest wave of this trend is tweens and preteens coming into Sephora and being very demanding and ravenous for your products. I would love to hear your thoughts on that. We have kids coming in being disrespectful to Sephora employees, they’re being disrespectful of the space, they’re leaving messes, they’re upsetting other customers, they’re upsetting the employees. We have a responsibility as a brand, but part of this is a parenting issue. When do you allow your kids on social media? Do you allow your kids to storm Sephora with your credit card? I’m grateful for parents who choose to buy the brand for their kids, but I wish that wasn’t happening in Sephora, because I don’t think that it’s appealing. I go into the stores myself and I clean it up all the time. No way. Really, I do it all the time. I walk in with a baseball cap on and I take a Kleenex and I clean it up. And I put everything back where it’s supposed to be, so I try to do my part. How do the stores react? They don’t know. No one’s ever walked up to me—I do it all the time. This brand is my baby, and what stresses me out the most is reading some of the stuff that people say online, saying that our intention is just to make money, saying that we’ve targeted kids with the colors, that we want to get kids to buy our retinol and acids and it’s gonna ruin their skin barrier, that we’re being irresponsible that we’re not thinking this through. It’s hurtful to read things that aren’t true, but all we can do is keep trying to guide people and doing our part. We’re flattered that the kids like the brand, we’re flattered that people like the brand, but there’s only so much in our control. Do you feel that you’ve sufficiently answered the question about whether or not your products are safe for kids with that one post you published on the Drunk Elephant Instagram account? Or do you feel like it will take a series of educational posts? I don’t think we need to do another post on it. There’s only one answer, and that is we have products for all skin, and not every product in our line is appropriate for every person. Acids and retinols are certainly not appropriate for pre-pubescent skin. We’re gonna keep repeating that as much as we need to repeat it. How are you feeling about the brand’s immediate future now? I’m so excited about the brand. We’re experiencing big growth right now. We’re more global now. It’s just exciting to see the awareness and the philosophy kind of getting out there more. So I’ve never been more excited about the brand. Subscribe to Ad Age Sign up now for the latest industry news and analysis Click here

Drunk Elephant founder on the skincare brand's Gen Alpha controversy

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