Drunk Elephant goes back to basics with latest campaign
Key takeaways
- Drunk Elephant is moving away from trend-driven marketing to refocus on its original positioning around simple, intentional, and scientifically reliable skin care.
- The new campaign centers on biocompatibility and minimalism, promoting formulas that exclude its “suspicious six” ingredients.
- The brand is pursuing a strategic reset toward long-term credibility and alignment after a rocky 2025.
Drunk Elephant is scrapping its strategy geared toward younger consumers and returning to its original ethos of skin care rooted in intentionality, reliability, and simplicity. With the launch of its Please Enjoy Responsibly campaign, Drunk Elephant is emphasising a refined and finetuned approach to skin care with scientifically backed and reliable products.
Barbara Calcagni, president of global brands, Drunk Elephant, NARS, and Dr. Dennis Gross Skin Care, mentions the founding principle of simplicity that Drunk Elephant is returning to as “everything the skin needs, nothing it doesn’t.”
The shift follows an arduous 2025, where the skin care brand suffered a 65% drop in sales in Q1, resulting in an 8.5% decrease in net sales across its parent company, Shiseido’s global portfolio.
Skin first formulas
Drunk Elephant outlines the unfavorable ingredients it has omitted from its products as the “suspicious six”: essential oils, drying alcohols, silicones, chemical sunscreens, fragrances/dyes, and sodium lauryl sulfate.
The brand encourages customers to entirely remove the suspicious six from their routines by taking a “Drunk Break,” aka solely using their products for a “total skin reset.”
Drunk Elephant refers to skin care routines using its products as “smoothies.” The products can be blended together in the palm and applied without concern for the interaction of different ingredients, emphasizing the compatibility of its entire repertoire.
The cosmetics brand further emphasizes biocompatibility as an asset of its products, underscoring the importance of skin care that aligns with the pH of the human skin barrier. The skin barrier has a pH of approximately 5.5, and its products range between 2.5 and 6.8 pH, staying within the necessary range for the skin microbiome.
A plea for teens
Over the last few years, a combination of Drunk Elephant’s playful packaging and TikTok trending status has resulted in it becoming increasingly popular with younger consumer bases. The brand has not previously combatted its subsequent association with young consumers, which provided a new revenue stream. Some industry analysts attributed the age demographic diversification to sales falls and a hit to its brand reputation.
In other brand developments, in November 2024, Drunk Elephant voluntarily withdrew three skin care products due to various ingredient mix-ups. While some consumers lauded its proactive and transparent approach, others suggested the recall could signal deeper issues within its supply chain.
Drunk Elephant highlights simple, skin-first formulas.
Additionally, Drunk Elephant’s parent company, Shiseido, projected significant setbacks due to US tariffs in 2025. The company originally estimated a potential impact of up to ¥7 billion (US$48.4 million), but adjusted it in August to approximately ¥3 billion (US$18.85 million).
Innova Market Insights’ project lead for Beauty Personal Care previously told Personal Care Insights that “time will tell how Shiseido restructures itself. It has undergone some changes in its executive leadership, which can influence its approach to brand messaging for its target audience.”
“This could also be an important time for them to reevaluate how to align Drunk Elephant with the overall ‘vibe’ of the parent company, which at this moment, is at a dissonance.”
Drunk Elephant is now adjusting its sails to realign with its original ethos and promote longevity rather than adhering to microtrends.
