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BRAVE COMMERCE
Ulta Beauty’s CMO Michelle Crossan-Matos on Innovation and Customer-Centric Marketing
00:26:45
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- [00:02]
Michelle Crossan Matos
I definitely think the ability to act with speed and agility, not just to do it, but to love it. I think that's very important because stress is not about having lots of work and working in crunch time. It's about your perception and your reaction of it. I love that. I love a fast pace. It does not stress me, in fact fuels me. That's where people have to really consider their personality style and their ability to move it speed. I think there's also a skill set in being able to condense the ability to think strategically and move fast into action.
- [00:41]
Sarah Hofstadter
Welcome to today's episode of Brave Commerce.
- [00:44]
Rachel Tippograph
I'm Rachel Tippograph, the founder and CEO of Mic Mac.
- [00:47]
Sarah Hofstadter
I'm Sarah Hofstadter, president of Profitero and.
- [00:50]
Rachel Tippograph
This is a show that talks about what's relevant in E commerce for the world's biggest brands. Sarah, I think a lot about how you study journalism.
- [01:05]
Sarah Hofstadter
I think a lot about that too. But why is that?
- [01:07]
Rachel Tippograph
I feel that you approach conversations with an open, curious mind as if you're. You're investigating a story or trying to learn a new discipline to become the authority on something.
- [01:19]
Sarah Hofstadter
When I was at 360, I. I made journalism 101 become mandatory for all employees. Not as a college course. We actually offered it as education within, within the company. And we said if you can't tell a story like a journalist, you can't present an analytics deck. You can't present a obviously a creative brief or anything like that. How are you going to sell yourself if there's no actual story to sell and if you don't sell it like a journalist life, Conversations do not evolve in like five act Shakespearean plays where you have time to build up to this crescendo, like nobody has any time. Like start with the headline, move your way down.
- [01:57]
Michelle Crossan Matos
Yeah.
- [01:57]
Sarah Hofstadter
Taking the loving curiosity I had from journalism and channeling that into how it helps me think through both, you know, like how I did it in my agency life, but even how I have interpersonal relationships. It's powered by curiosity, I suppose, which comes from there. So I suppose. So do you have something like that?
- [02:21]
Rachel Tippograph
I mean, I've always wanted to make a dollar at a very young age, so I feel like that's true.
- [02:26]
Sarah Hofstadter
Listen to episode one.
- [02:27]
Rachel Tippograph
It's funny, like when we meet people, whether it's on Brave Commerce or outside, it's. You can immediately identify someone's DNA. We're about to have Michelle, who's the CMO of Ulta, on the show and you can just immediately smell, touch, feel her Love of retail that goes so well beyond just her Ulta experience, which.
- [02:51]
Sarah Hofstadter
Is funny because she didn't spend all of her career in retail. It's almost like there's a bookend, it's her first job, and then she feel so clearly at home here. So, you know, the question is, there are all these people that say, you know, it doesn't feel like work when you love it so much or like you take your the things you love and make it into careers. Well, not all of that really makes money, but if you can find that trifecta, then passion, willingness to pay you and transferable skill, like, then you can kind of make it work. And she clearly does. The way she talks about her love of retail and the passion that she exudes, but the way she even thinks about the role of the associates in store in guiding the purchase also is pretty remarkable. And yes, your entrepreneurship started probably before your Bat Mitzvah, but that's probably just your earliest memory of it.
- [03:38]
Rachel Tippograph
Exactly. Well, on that note, let's bring Michelle onto the show. We are super excited to have Michelle Crossan Matos, the chief marketing officer of Ulta Beauty. Hello, Michelle.
- [03:53]
Michelle Crossan Matos
Thank you for having me here.
- [03:55]
Rachel Tippograph
Absolutely. In preparation for recording this, I went through your LinkedIn. I was really actually excited to see that your background aligns so closely with many of the guests that we've had on the show. Because you grew up at Procter and Gamble, then you moved to Samsung, we've had executives from both places on the show. However, most of them we have never seen crossover into retail. You have. So what unique advantages do you feel you have leading marketing for a huge retailer given the fact that you have such strong DNA within the brand manufacturing side?
- [04:32]
Michelle Crossan Matos
Great question. Right. Can I just say that I always want to work in retail and I worked in retail like we all did when we were kids. You know, we all had this summer job, but actually, I consistently worked in retail and I work for the largest menswear store in the world based on the Guinness Book of Records. Go figure, right? And I did that since I was 16 years old. And I always dreamt of working in retail, continuing on, but, you know, Procter and Gamble lured me in with the amazing opportunities there and worked in it and then marketing and then obviously transferred over to Samsung, where I actually led strategy, innovation, as well as marketing there, too. And so coming to retail, it's a great question because now I'm like, right, I've got all that brand building. Got that in abundance. And thank you very much for, you know, the 16 years within P and G. What Samsung really gave me was speed, agility and the ability to really dream and think really big. Like not just next year but like three to five years and really imagine what the guests or the consumer will want and what their pain points will be and how you can uniquely serve them. It was like a strategic framework. So P and G had the who, what how for like brand building framework and then Samsung had this, you know, strategy framework on speed. And now that I'm in retail, I have the fortunate love of going back to beauty care where I grew up originally and taking all the suite of capabilities and skills that I've learned. I know like I love it. I love the fact that I run E Commerce, which is a business that you care about your sales and you're taking yourself every hour. I love the fact that I care about how can I drive my traffic this morning versus this afternoon. I love being in the weeds. But then I love that we also are working for one of the most beloved brands in this country. And so you get to dream big and think about purpose. You don't often get that. And I just feel so privileged. I get to work and do a multitude of things like that.
- [06:42]
Rachel Tippograph
For other marketers who might currently be on the brand manufacturing side and are thinking about what it takes to move to the retailer side, what do you think are those skill gaps that someone might need to fill?
- [06:53]
Michelle Crossan Matos
I definitely think the ability to act with speed and agility, not just to do it, but to love it. I think that's very important because stress is not about having lots of work and working in crunching. It's about your perception and your reaction of it. I love that. I love a fast pace. It does not stress me and in fact fuels me. That's where people have to really consider their personality style and their ability to move at speed. I think there's also a skill set in being able to condense the ability to think strategically and move fast into action. You've got a bunch of people that work in consultancy firms, really great at strategic frameworks and being able to analyze business models. But maybe execution may be something that. And then you have people that are just really great at execution but can't really do big. If you want to move into retail and you want to be in a leadership, leadership position, you got to do both. So if I were to summarize it, I'd say you want to really be a center brain leader, someone that can really use your intuition as well as your analytics and really have that Ability to execute with speed. And then it's the ability to collaborate and brand build brands that are not your brands. Hey, I work with 600 brands. None of them are the brands that I define their name in, their pricing strategy, their promotional strategy, their packaging strategy. But we take it and say, okay, we love your brand. We want to make sure that our 44 million loyalty members know who you are and love and appreciate you for who you are. And so it's about brand building just with a different lens on.
- [08:35]
Sarah Hofstadter
I love that. Before I go to my next question, I have to take a step back. The world's biggest menswear store by Guinness. What is it? I just want to know.
- [08:46]
Michelle Crossan Matos
It's called Slater's Menswear. All right, Slater's Menswear. And it was fascinating. It was retail at its best. You know, when our guests would enter the store, we would have all these associates working, and we knew where every guest was, and we made sure that they were never bothered. And that the minute they looked up for help, there was someone dedicated to help them. And we would have three, four, five guests at the same time, all around about the same area. And you knew exactly how to help them. And we literally had a league of tracking ourselves every week. And so being able to sell, being really measured on your sales, but also doing a way that people want to come back because loyalty is very important there. I learned from the age of 16 years old, and I loved it. I even considered leaving college early to pursue my retail career. I didn't. In the end, I finished college. Crazy, right? You know, thing this, I know I am in retail, so I'm so happy that the universe really nudged me in the right way. And so I eventually joined retail in an industry and a category that I love.
- [09:59]
Rachel Tippograph
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- [10:26]
Sarah Hofstadter
I really wish there was a mechanism to take that mechanism of sales and actually teach every furniture store anywhere how to do what you just did. Because I'm in furniture shopping mode right now, and anytime I walk into the store, they are just all too eager to help me, so. Which, of course, just drives me back online. Yeah, I think what's very clear is that you've got retail in your bones, in your blood. One thing that also is Very clear is that you've always been ahead of your time in every way that you think. And so when you combine yourself as a, as a forward thinking executive, combining a lot of that and what you just talked about, what you learned at Samsung, along with the fact that beauty trends are so frequently ahead of the curve and can kind of see a little bit more on where the trends are going, what do you think those new behaviors are going to be from your guests that we should be looking out for and that brands who listen to this podcast should be thinking about planning for when they're working with you?
- [11:27]
Michelle Crossan Matos
Yeah, great question. Can I give a bit context before I give the answer to that question? Do you know when I remember when I made a few shows in my career, there was a moment when I was responsible for strategy and transformation of a 40 billion dollar business, really large business enterprise wise, in an industry that I wasn't an expert in, that was the consumer tech at the time. Now I remember having imposter syndrome. We all get that, right? I mean I can imposter syndrome for everything for being a mother. I've been a mother for 13 years. She's had this do I? But no, it comes. But anyway, I have serious imposter syndrome. And I remember the time thing, Gosh, I don't know really how to figure out this strategy. And I remember there was a moment where, you know, you have a conversation yourself, but it's like, no, you got to tell yourself this is what you're great at and you will become great at it. And so I had to work on my self confidence, on that ability to strategize and envision. And I studied every morning like I was at college every morning. Case studies, I listen to podcasts. I studied so that I actually could learn strategic frameworks, the approaches, because I didn't come from a consultant background. So I just want to put that out there as people that are listening. Everyone is a leader in something and a lagger and something else. And if you have dreams and ambitions to be a leader in a space, know that you can be. But it takes real hard work and grit and it takes about a main shift and also a capability leveling up. Like you got to really teach yourself and there is no excuse not to do that now with YouTube podcasts, there's everything out there that can teach you anything. So I just want to plug that because I'm really passionate about if there's a young kid listening right now and they want to be a CEO one day, they should know that they can be, because it's all out there and how they can do it. All right, so let's talk about trends. And, you know, listen, I'm not a fortune teller. And that's the one thing I realized about beauty, care and trends. The most unexpected things become trends. I mean, the whole donut glaze and you name it, you know, ultimat. I mean, it's amazing. Like, the trends actually take place. What I do think is more critical than the actual trend is the process of identifying trends. So I talked about in our investor day most recently that we've made a shift from social being a part of our mix to being at the center of our mix, because we believe relevancy is actually the next frontier of growth for us. We have outstanding brand love and awareness. Everyone knows us, but do you have a relationship with us? Are we relevant to you and key moments that matter to you. So, like you're walking in a furniture store, how am I talking to you? You know, making you feel like this is a worthwhile conversation. So ensure that you have the right social media framework. For instance, we are obsessed by cohorts, and that means that I know that we are a destination for a lifetime when it comes to beauty, that we serve little gen alphas all the way to boomers. And those generations, of course, all ages, all races, all genders, they often shop together. And so what we do in social media is you put a bunch of content out for different cohorts, you see what sticks. And it could well be that it's like a cohort in Miami and they're really loving this radiant look and it's really popping and we're like, could we scale that up so it's a country wide micro trend and could it become a macro trend that eventually our assortment could actually be tailored to? So I kind of given you a framework, not so much about the trends, but the framework for everyone who's listening. If you're working in marketing, you really should be thinking about throwing stuff out there, seeing what sticks, and then curating it and amplifying it so that you are not just benefiting from trends, but that you're generating trends.
- [15:34]
Rachel Tippograph
What you just said in terms of the relationship of the speed that social moves at and then your ability to operationalize that and marry that to your assortment strategy. As someone who, before I built Micmac, I ran global digital at Gap, and knowing the speed that that organization moved at, how do you operationalize something like that internally?
- [15:56]
Michelle Crossan Matos
This is still a beast. This is hard. I'm not going to say that we have conquered this. We identify the teams and the organizations that actually have real time learnings about trends, that they share the same systems, that they have meeting points, cadence, collaboration, so that we're actually co learning together and co aligning on what we should be building on. We actually have very powerful agencies that really support us too. Like for instance, I'm very fortunate that I worked with a number of great agencies. IPG is my media agency. I have VaynerMedia that supports me the social and I have Hunter that supports me with pr. Now it's about having an integrated agency collaboration team that they all right, we've got this cooking up here and then let's make sure we amplify it. I will say that it is not easy. I personally do get involved in this because it is the next frontier of growth for us. Everyone is loving it, everyone wants to do it, but it's art. And that reminds me of another thing that is also hard. I grew up in the brand building golden age, PNG and TV ads and all that good stuff. And now it's social media and it's AI and gen and we just gotta get comfortable with real time ingestion of data and real time automation of curation of content. And there's a lot of people that don't feel confident in that because they want their fingers in it, they want to bring the human aspect to it. So I would say we got to get comfortable with it and we got to all find, depending on your business and your brand, the ways of you inserting yourself and your humanness and connection to that point. So like for instance, in consumer tech, it's a very different way of showing up than when you're in skin care. Because skin care is self care. We know that skincare is not just like put a moisturizer on. No, you're taking 10 minutes out of your day to care for yourself. We gotta think and show up differently. So anyway, I think as you can tell, I could go on and on about this.
- [18:05]
Sarah Hofstadter
Well, I appreciate that. And in the vein of talking about real time insights, real time action, speed, the almost hottest topic after, I don't know, AI and seven other things would be retail media. Many of these retailers, most in fact in the US have also become ad businesses.
- [18:22]
Michelle Crossan Matos
Yeah.
- [18:22]
Sarah Hofstadter
So how do you think about your role in competing against other retail media networks? But you're a marketer with social at the center, but you're also trying to monetize your your space. How do you think about balancing both.
- [18:37]
Michelle Crossan Matos
Of those I'm going to gradually like most people, right competitive care of what's going on with competition. But I will tell you my whole learning that I learned over the years and especially not to beauty is that you got to celebrate your own strengths and really focus on them and don't get distract of my competition. I feel very fortunate and lucky that I work in a dynamic competitive industry and there's great competition. I celebrate that because that means it's better for the consumer, the guest and that we're always serving up really interesting, innovative ways that really champion all of our guests. So I focus on what's core to us. What's core to us is our loyalty program. So for those who don't know, we've got, you know, UB Media, that's our retail media network. We've been building it since 2022 working on all our products and all our audience build and all that. Good Stu. Well, because we know that having one of the largest loyalty programs in the country, I can offer a bespoke brand building service to brands that are small all the way to large. Classically being around for more than 100 years, we can get every brand and in so that they can either create their own or we do it and we create campaigns that target our loyalty members either on or offline our site. Right. How excellent is that? Like I don't think people really understand the power of retail media networks. The fact that I know these.4 million loyalty members. So I stay very focused on that. I stay focused on the fact that okay, what am I going to do in our homepage? What am I going to do in my pdps? What am I going to do when it comes to social media and what learnings am I having on my core media that can inform my UV media and vice versa. How can I create a TV campaign for holiday? But how does it inspire UV media, Retail media network creative. So I think it's just a really wonderful ecosystem by Wheel that basically takes all that superpower of loyalty and brand building and helps build our brand and build other people's brands and then it just keeps coming around and around and around.
- [20:49]
Rachel Tippograph
It's awesome to hear how you're thinking about the synergies beyond retail media and also how it impacts the overall ulta brand. I imagine you're, you're probably also layering in influencers to that whole mix and that's been a key part of. It feels like a lot of the retailer strategy is to come out with their own influencer networks. It's so natural for beauty. So how does Ulta approach the creator ecosystem?
- [21:13]
Michelle Crossan Matos
When I started just under two years ago, you do your normal onboarding and you go to the stores, you meet the associates, and there's something really special about our associates. Well, one, we have more than 50,000 associates working in store every day. 1400 stores across the country and every state. That's pretty powerful. 50,000 people, right? So if you imagine just one of those individuals talks to an individual a week in all those stores, that's 50,000 times 1,400 of human connections. So I tell you that because we launched our Joy Equity platform campaign a year and a half ago based on our associates telling us, you know what, there's a deficit in this world. There are people coming into our store that want joy in life, but they can't have it because there's an inner critic telling them, you're too young, you're too old, you're not smart enough, you're too fat, you're too thin. You know, all of those inner critic, those frenemies from within that tell you whatever, well, you know, I got one. And you know, she'll tell me that red lipstick isn't for you today. And I was like, you know what? I know the Joy platform is telling me like, go away. It's time for me to not listen to you and for me to live my best life. The reason why I tell you that is it was our store associates that started this whole campaign. We started Inside out. So we launched that and then we're like, okay, how do we complement our creators and influencers with their associates? Because our associates are more than just associated associates. Not only are the therapists and friends and your beauty besties, which we call them all the time, you know, they're our greatest influencers. So we already have the Ulta Beauty Collective, where we have our own influencer network. And we launched Ulta Beauties, which is our own associates being rewarded as creators. And then we just recently launched a creator program as well with creator iq. So we have like a three pillar approach. I am beyond proud, beyond proud that we can bring our associates into the marketing world. They're in our campaigns, they're in our TV shows, they're in our print. There are models on our walls. They are creators, they're inspiration of our brand campaign. I know there are many people that may talk about this. I don't know how many people are really, truly doing it. And that started with the Joy program.
- [23:39]
Rachel Tippograph
No, it's, it's clearly the associates are A true differentiator. It's awesome to hear how you integrated them and started to provide them with the tools to become creators. We gotta ask you our famous last question, which is, what's the bravest thing you've ever done?
- [23:53]
Michelle Crossan Matos
Oh, my goodness. I'll tell you now. I'm not a very brave person. I'm afraid of jumping up plane. That's my next big thing. I want to like, do that. But since I've been 21, I've been on the go and I left my home country, which I was never meant to do, and I moved to Germany. And every two, three years I move countries. And the most recent one is I moved to Puerto Rico three years ago to live in my husband's home country and continue raising our kids here. I would argue it's pretty brave. Pretty brave to live somewhere and work elsewhere. I've been doing that for 11 years now. I used to do it between Geneva, Switzerland and London, England. And then I did it Puerto Rico to East Cowes, and I have Puerto Rico to Illinois. It's pretty brave because there's a lot of juggling and all that stuff. And I talk about this a lot. We recently just launched our own podcast, the Joy of and Talking about Joy. And I will tell you, that brave decision of moving to my husband's home brings me so much joy. I get to experience this beautiful, rich culture of where people choose happiness every day. This is an island that truly believes that happiness is the answer. And they were always my inspiration for the Joy platform. Wow.
- [25:12]
Rachel Tippograph
You would have never known that you live in Puerto Rico. It's so amazing to hear these stories and the fact that you're doing this, being a corporate executive, being a mom, it's. It's really remarkable.
- [25:24]
Michelle Crossan Matos
Yeah. Well, thank you for saying that. Sometimes it's really hard. I'm not going to lie. You know, juggling all those plates of Mummyville, what I failed in and what I'm getting better at is identifying the key moments where you really need to be there. And not all moments are equal. And it's seen it through the kids eyes, not through your eyes. That's a big learning and I'm so grateful that I have that learning now so I can do something about it.
- [25:49]
Rachel Tippograph
Well, thank you, Michelle. We're going to have to check out your podcast, Joy of and appreciate you sharing all of these insights, especially as we roll into probably your busiest season, end of the year Q4 holiday madness.
- [26:02]
Michelle Crossan Matos
Oh, my goodness. Please, please try our podcast because our Joy Council is on the AY Love was our inaugural episode. So get on there and this is the moment for all of us to just sprinkle a little bit more joy. The world needs it.
- [26:18]
Rachel Tippograph
Love that. Amazing. Well, thank you and we will see you soon.
- [26:23]
Michelle Crossan Matos
Thank you so much. I love chatting.
- [26:28]
Rachel Tippograph
If you like what you heard and you want to hear from more retailers, you can go check out an episode we recorded in February with the president of Roundel, which is Target's retail media business, Sarah Travis. Or go hear from our friend at Walmart, Rich, who's the GM SDP of the Walmart Connect business. Tell a friend, write a review. Thanks for listening.
- [27:14]
Michelle Crossan Matos
Hi, I'm Jackie Cooper, Global Chief Brand Officer at Edelman and the host of Touch of Truth, a new podcast launching on the Ad Week Podcast Network. My dad gave me this incredibly smart piece of advice. Meet everyone once. As a result, I've met some of the most fascinating and inspiring people on the planet. Now on Touch of Truth, we're coming center stage and sharing the mic to experience stories of truth, insights and visions for the future that will challenge your way of thinking. Touch of Truth is available wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes come out every Tuesday. I do hope to see you there.