Mojo Supermarket created a parody "Ad Rage" website to launch their AOR announcement
In a parody of a trade press news break, Mojo Supermarket named Mojo Supermarket as its social agency of record.
To make its point, the independent agency created a fake news website, “AdRage,” that links to an article of the announcement. The website pokes fun at Mojo Supermarket staff and makes other advertising jokes, with headlines including “Is LinkedIn the new Craigslist” and “[Group Creative Director] Kate Carter crushingly broke after faux pas Ad Age stunt goes horribly wrong.”
The stunt points to how agencies are using social media not just to generate buzz from their clients but to build their own brands.
Also read: Agencies adapt to brands’ focus on creators, social media
Kvell, a social-first agency, has built an Instagram following of almost 90,000 through a mix of memes, games and other original content. Mischief @ No Fixed Address has experimented on Threads with choose-your-own-adventure games and call-and-response brand-building exercises. And The VIA Agency has built a robust TikTok channel, with one video—showing a copywriter transporting a Monstera albo plant home from a shoot—getting 1.6 million views.
The news story reporting Mojo Supermarket’s “strategic partnership with itself” is equally as satirical, with a headline image of Mojo Founder and Creative Director Mo Said shaking hands with himself and a nut graf explaining how the announcement continues the agency’s “mission of seeking constant attention.”
Mojo founder and creative director Mo Said shakes his own hand in a parody article on “AdRage.”
Mojo Supermarket joked that it spent six months looking for the right agency before deciding “they were the best fit for themselves,” according to the fake article.
In reality, Mojo Supermarket formalized an internal team of creatives, strategists and production earlier this year to run its social media accounts, dubbed Socialmarket. The unit is overseen by Group Creative Director Kate Carter, Head of Production Erica Grubman and Head of Communications Hannah Benabdallah.
Naming Mojo its own social AOR was meant to be a funny post on LinkedIn, highlighting the agency’s unusual methods of marketing itself. But it quickly spiraled into something more when Carter messaged Socialmarket about it.
“Everyone began building the idea which resulted in creating a fake “AdRage” site with funny fake headlines and a fake article,” Carter said. “But that's Socialmarket for you, a small thing became a more fun thing than we even intended it to be. The internet and collaboration intersect perfectly in that way.”
This is not the first time Mojo Supermarket has pulled a stunt to make a point with humor. Earlier this year, the shop held a Popeye’s chicken sandwich hostage to negotiate a spot in the fast food restaurant’s U.S. creative review.
In the years since it was founded in 2018, Mojo has developed an online identity as “weird, funny and culturally relevant” as the people who work at the agency, said Grubman. While she admits that “we’re of course not going to win a pitch over this,” the social media pranks have brought the agency recognition.
“We get hit up a lot from brands that we’ve either directly tagged or posted about, or marketers that simply like what we’re doing,” she said.
