ELF Leverages Pinterest Boards To Match Consumers with Their Unique Shades

What’s your color story?

Gen Z-centric ELF Cosmetics has created a tool to help users discover makeup shades that harmonize with their unique features. They’ll do this with help from a curated Pinterest board featuring shoppable ELF products tailored to their individual color story.

Introducing ELF-nalysis. The free experience delivers seamless color-season analysis at users’ fingertips. Users simply take a selfie (or upload one from their camera roll), and the tool analyzes their hue (warm or cool), value (light or deep contrast) and chroma (bright or muted) to reveal their color season and custom board.

“‘Color e.l.f.nalysis’” is about breaking down beauty barriers and making personalized color analysis accessible to every eye, lip, and face—for free,” said Patrick O’Keefe, chief integrated marketing communications officer at ELF Beauty. “This tool, developed with Pinterest and in collaboration with real-life color experts, complements—not replaces—the human touch. It’s a smart, seamless, and fun way for our community to discover what works for them—and find their perfect ELF product matches in just a few taps.”

Mapping Seasonal Trends

To bring this experience to life, ELF worked with Pinterest’s insights team to map seasonal trends. By looking at user search, save and shop behavior on Pinterest —including a 23% increase in “true summer makeup” and a 30% increase in “spring color palette analysis” — the Pinterest team identified trending searches to fuel ELF’s curated boards. The experience also features Pinterest’s newest collages format, bringing color ideas to life in a dynamic way that reaches shoppers at the precise moment inspiration strikes.

“With 1.6 billion makeup-related searches over the past year and a 22-time increase in interest around tools like ‘color season analysis,’ it’s clear consumers are craving personalized beauty experiences,” said Katie Dombrowski, VP of CPG at Pinterest. “We’re thrilled to partner with ELF to bring this innovation to life and meet users exactly where inspiration strikes.”

ELF partnered with Pinterest creators to develop season-specific content through the platform’s new creator partnership packages. This collaboration enables creators to produce Pinterest-first content and amplify their reach using Idea Ads with paid partnerships. To bring “color e.l.f.nalysis” to life, ELF tapped Movement Strategy — a social-powered creative agency that uses real-time insights and platform behavior to build brand strategies, breakthrough content, and influencer partnerships that move culture.
ELF and Pinterest will bring “color ELF-nalysis” to Pinterest Manifestival at the Carlton Beach Club in Cannes on June 19. Attendees will get an exclusive first look at the new tool and enjoy a mini seasonal makeup styling session.

Explore the experience here.