Drew Elliott Is Keeping MAC Cosmetics at the Forefront of Culture

MAC Cosmetics senior vice president and global creative director Drew Elliott doesn’t think of the company as a beauty brand. He defines it as a cultural brand, he said, in conversation with Jenny B. Fine, executive editor of beauty at WWD and Beauty Inc, in a discussion presented by MAC Cosmetics.

“MAC has had a huge responsibility,” he said. “It’s changed so much. It’s changed giving models, it’s changed beauty. MAC has been a blueprint for so many other brands. As a cultural brand, MAC is at the center of pop culture.”

A key part of Elliott’s role at the company is to keep the cosmetics leader at the center of cultural relevance. Sharing an anecdote about his first week on the job, Elliott said he had lunch with Leonard A. Lauder, who emphasized the importance of making MAC “cool.” 

In Elliott’s words, we currently live in an “attention economy,” which means that staying culturally relevant and popular can change day to day. To stay relevant, the company works across myriad platforms and categories. “There are so many building blocks — whether our work in film and television, our work on TikTok with some of the greatest creators in the world, or things we’re doing inside fashion week or in collaborations,” said Elliott. 

Realistically speaking, Elliott noted that it takes a brand up to three years to come out with a product from concept to manufacturing. So keeping up with the fast-paced nature of consumers’ ever-changing needs is not possible via new products alone. However, there are other ways to make beauty products interesting to a customer, such as reanimating the company’s existing products to better align with current trends.

“I am an avid comment reader, I live in everyone’s comments,” said Elliott. “We have focus groups and all this stuff. But if you read the comments, they’re really going to tell you where to go.”

With a background in editorial as the previous editor in chief at Paper Magazine, Elliott is well-versed in spotting trends and at MAC, created a trend engine to help drive innovation at scale. “MAC is the art store of the face. We have all of these incredible products. Some of them are 20, 30, 40 years old. The question is ‘How do you take this remarkable catalog and turn it into something brand new?’” Elliott said.

Elliott articulates that “math and magic” were involved to create the trend engine. “There is a point where the math tells you something: analytics, data, strategy. But then there’s the magic piece, that tells you the gut feeling, connecting the dots, the artistry and putting all of those things together. Working on building the trend team, it was to operationalize where math and magic meet.”

For example, black lipstick is not an easy shade to get people to wear, but after Lizzo wore the shade Caviar, the company worked with her makeup artist and sparked a conversation about the revitalization of goth makeup. The hue was used on the catwalk at Luar’s show and later reinvigorated during Halloween. Elliott said that multidimensional, editorial style of thinking helps drive brand relevancy.

Cat Quinn, who is named WWD’s Top 10 Fastest-Growing Beauty Influencers of 2022, currently serves as the company’s executive director of global trends. Elliott voiced his appreciation having not just corporate people in the mix, but someone who has their finger on the pulse to speak to culturally relevant moments the company should be participating in.

Elliott vocalized the importance of agility. A challenge for big brands is that culture will continue to move faster — one that he is ready to take on head-first to connect the dots excitingly. “You have to move fast every single day and have a team ready to do that.”