Clockwise from left: Mischief's Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer Greg Hahn, President Kerry McKibbin, Head of Development Oliver McAteer, Executive Creative Director Kevin Mulroy, Head of Strategy Jeff McCrory and Executive Creative Director Bianca Guimaraes.
From its very inception, Mischief @ No Fixed Address has been about the risk worth taking.
“Risk is in the eye of the beholder,” said Mischief Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer Greg Hahn. “What I feel is risky is to spend a lot of money on a piece of advertising that nobody cares about or notices.”
Three years after its founding, Mischief is still getting plenty of notice. In 2022, it picked up 10 agency-of-record wins and a dozen other pieces of new business, while expanding its relationship with Molson Coors and Kraft Heinz and doubling revenue year-over-year from 2021. Impressively, many of the agency's wins last year, including Tinder and FanDuel Casino, were won without a traditional pitch but based on Mischief’s reputation.
As Hahn said, “Why date around if you’ve already found the one?”
Much of Mischief’s success comes from the “not-so-secret” strategy of staying true to its ethos and living up to its name, according to Hahn.
“More agencies are just fighting the battle day by day on whatever pops in front of them,” Hahn said. “We know who we are, we project that to the world and we attract the right kind of people because we’re not just an agency, we’re also a brand.”
Hahn and his team at Mischief know that means saying “no” sometimes. Actually, many times. The agency turns down 95% of all new business approaches so it can focus on the 5%.
Yet the agency doesn’t simply receive a brief, conceive of a crazy idea and run with it. The agency's collaborative style of working focuses more on solving problems and less on selling products.
This “Mischief mindset” is about “interrogating the shit out of everything” and getting to the real problem a brand wants solved, according to Hahn. “Once you find that, it’s usually not the one you think you’re solving and that automatically leads you to an interesting way in."
One example was Mischief's end run for Molson Coors. NFL star quarterback Patrick Mahomes is a genuine lover of Coors Light, but NFL rules prohibit players from officially endorsing alcohol. Mischief turned this restriction into an opportunity, creating The Coors Light, a flashlight that Mahomes could endorse while being the unofficial spokesperson for Coors Light. The effort also raised money for the 15 and the Mahomies Foundation.
The flashlight sold out in 24 hours, and "The Official Beer of Everything Unofficial" campaign of which it was a part led to an increase in sales compared to the same period in 2021. Molson Coors Chief Commercial Officer Michelle St. Jacques called it Coors Light's “most successful summer campaign in years."
"We have seen [Mischief] live up to their reputation across many brands in our portfolio—always with a smart, strategic, brand-led solution and, of course, just the right amount of mischief,” St. Jacques said. “From launching a Coors flashlight to strapping hard seltzers to a rocket for Miller, to helping us launch the hottest summer drink with Simply Spiked, they never let us down."
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Mischief’s reputation for innovative solutions and catchy campaigns has proven a pattern of brand building that clients crave. Tinder Global Chief Marketing Officer Melissa Hobley first got to know Mischief’s unorthodox creativity when she worked for rival OkCupid and came to Hahn with the short brief, “How do we make voting hot?” Mischief devised an OkCupid campaign for the 2020 election that encouraged people to be a VILF—based on the common acronyms MILF and DILF—meaning a Voter I’d Like to F*ck.
“They were so agile. They were so nimble. They were so potent,” Hobley recalled.
When Hobley joined Tinder in 2022, she tasked Mischief with helping the dating app shake off its “hook-up” label and promoting the new “explore” hub that gives users more control over who they meet. The agency then devised a creative platform that told people “You’re Not For Everyone,” but that they are for someone, and Tinder would help users find their person.
As a result, Tinder saw an 8% increase in app downloads over the campaign period and rose to the top of brand favorability over competitors Bumble and Hinge.
“Mischief is just wickedly creative, and they just think differently," Mobley said.
The agency also makes social statements. In work for sexual pleasure brand Dame, Mischief took a stand on the overturning of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling. With critical access to reproductive health care for women across the U.S. now limited, Mischief conceived the "Get F*cked by the Government on Your Own Terms" campaign, creating a limited-edition dildo in the shape of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (one of the chief engineers in the demise of Roe v. Wade).
The NSFW campaign fueled the conversation about abortion rights, garnered more than a billion earned media impressions and drove thousands to register to vote via the Mitch McConnell dildo landing page.
Campaigns such as these were a big draw for talent: In 2022, Mischief saw a 100% staff retention rate and grew its ranks from 65 full-time employees to more than 100. In fact, since the agency’s founding, only one person has left.
As an independent agency, Mischief has the freedom to place big bets on talent. On average, the agency said it pours about 70% of its revenue back into talent through new hires, employee programs and promotions.
Last year Mischief brought on Anne Caceres-Gonzalez as director of people and culture to foster cultural and DEI development at the company, which increased BIPOC talent to 35% in 2022 compared to 27% in 2021. Its executive team is 34% people of color. A total of 61% of staff identify as female, and Mischief prides itself on having a creative department that is 40% female. Roughly 10% of the staff identifies as LGBTQ+ and 3% identifies as trans.
Mischief has worked with multiple female and BIPOC-owned production companies and directors for campaigns, including Baby Lion for Tinder Rescue Matches, Biscuit for Marvel SNAP, Daps @ Anonymous for Simply Spiked Lemonade and Sweet Rickey for Eos Smoothness in a Stick.
Hahn credits the agency’s overall success to putting in the work and making culture the No. 1 priority. In fact, nurturing an environment where employees want to create the best work of their careers was a founding principle of Mischief: What would you do if you weren’t afraid? The result is an environment akin to “the parents are out of town," he said.
“Have fun, be responsible and don’t wreck the place, but let your guard down,” Hahn said. “I want people to come here to express themselves and not to feel like they’re getting in trouble for anything.”
