The Link With Allen Ortega, Vice President of Marketing at Remedy Science

Welcome to "The Link," a Q&A series from UTA Next Gen, a specialty practice of UTA Entertainment Marketing. For this edition, we linked up with Allen Ortega, vice president of marketing at Remedy Science. Before joining Remedy Science, Ortega spent five years at L’Oréal, where he built CeraVe’s TikTok following from zero to 1.8 million followers and spearheaded the viral Michael CeraVe Super Bowl Campaign. A former YouTuber himself, Ortega has translated his creator mindset into building iconic marketing campaigns. 

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This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

You got your start on YouTube way before the creator economy became an industry worth close to $500 billion. What’s it like witnessing the explosion of creators in recent years and the embrace of brands?

It’s funny: In 2011 or 2012, I was making content on YouTube. I was at the first VidCon. Back then, it wasn't really a career path—it was something people did for fun, for the love of the game. In the five years that I was at L'Oreal, the creator economy became a real marketing lever. It's now the first topic on brand agendas. People are learning it in school. They want to understand: How do we unlock the power of creators? How do we become a loved brand? How do we be a part of culture? Given my background — doing this since I was a kid — it's the most rewarding thing  to work with creators and see people make a living in an industry nobody expected would be a career. 

What were some of the biggest changes you witnessed in how brands approach creator marketing during that time? 

The big difference is that brands are better at it now. Five years ago, most brands weren’t ready for creator partnerships. Those that were, weren't super confident. Now we've seen brands develop a mastery—robust seeding programs, creator management programs, creative that's interesting and speaks to culture. That creates more competition and pushes for us to think: How do we take it a level deeper? How do we connect with people in unexpected ways that goes beyond generic marketing talk?

What practices from your YouTube days did you bring to the brand world?

One of my favorite quotes is from this influencer Party Shirt: “Everything is cringe until it gets views.” That's essential for anyone working in social. Whatever you do probably won’t work at first unless you're really lucky. You have to grind it out. You're going to post a lot. You're going to learn from what works. Then, eventually, you'll get views and nobody will question you. The second you get a million organic views on something, you're good—but the process takes time. It takes iteration. It takes people questioning you and maybe thinking you're cringy. You have to have a strong stomach. My team grew CeraVe’s TikTok from zero to 1.8 million. My time as a creator informed the emotional stages of what that journey looks like and the discomfort you have to push through before something pops off. 

How did you center the conversation around creators at CeraVe? How did you iterate campaigns and trends to build a brand that speaks to people? 

The cool thing about CeraVe is that my boss, Adam Kornblum [L’Oréal’s chief creative officer], and I got to build it from scratch. There was no TikTok presence. No robust influencer program. That allowed us to take this social-listening-first approach from the beginning. I'll share two examples.

Tyler Perry once tweeted that he was ashy and needed help. We tweeted at him from the co-founder’s Twitter and said, “Tyler, let us hook you up with CeraVe.” He actually replied with a picture of him holding the bottle saying, “I already use it.” You think about all the money brands pay for celebrity endorsements, but getting one can be as simple as that—tweeting at them offering to help and finding out they're an authentic user. That was an early win around being community-first.

Another one I'll mention is that we were pretty early on in Charlie D'Amelio. She actually did a collaboration with Hiram—the big skincare guru of 2020-21—where he recommended that she use CeraVe. Then she started posting with CeraVe in her routine. By being social-first, we were able to say that beyond her reach and visibility, she actually had this authentic connection to the brand. We just had to figure out how to amplify it.

How do you make the content valuable that people will actually watch it? 

You're either adding value or you're not. There’s this entertainment paradigm that people are talking about in the industry right now. In the past, you paid to make people watch your content. The new paradigm is that you want to make content that's so good that people will pay to watch it. In a sense, they pay with their limited time. That's at the core of entertainment marketing and cultural marketing: How do we deliver value to the consumer? Can we make a campaign that people want to talk about,be a part of and laugh about?