Two years ago, Mischief @ No Fixed Address did not exist. Today, it tops Ad Age’s 2022 A-List.

See all of Ad Age's A-List 2022 winners here.

The agency has skyrocketed since opening its doors 21 months ago—an origin story that no doubt will go down as legend in advertising history. In April 2020, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer Greg Hahn became the industry’s poster child of pandemic casualties when he was laid off from his role as BBDO New York chief creative officer after 15 years. It was arguably the highest-profile creative shakeup in the midst of COVID chaos, a signal that even the most proven Madison Avenue stars were vulnerable in the new world order. 

Yet Hahn reemerged less than two months later with new purpose and a new M.O., partnering with indie Canadian agency No Fixed Address to open its first U.S. outpost. Untethered to a big agency overhead and bottom line, the fledgling shop was free to chart a new course. The name on the shingle—Mischief—made its intentions clear. And serving as its guiding force was NFA’s mantra: What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

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Fearlessness characterizes the agency’s brow-raising, sometimes controversial ideas. In its first few months, Mischief was pranking kids with Capri Sun packs full of water (for a good cause), and more notoriously, it asked consumers to “Send Noods” on behalf of Kraft Mac & Cheese, a campaign that riled certain moms and QAnon groups, yet ultimately was a business success. In 2021, the ideas got even wilder: a shaving cream line for Eos with the NSFW name “Bless Your F#@%ing Cooch”; a seltzer launch for Molson Coors’ Miller Genuine Draft—all the way into outer space; and a campaign for Jay-Z’s cannabis brand Monogram that challenged local weed legislation by juxtaposing it with more “lax” restrictions around bestiality, incest and cannibalism. 

While the work had the world talking, it also helped boost business. Adding to existing clients such as Molson Coors and Kraft Heinz, the agency welcomed newcomers including Netflix, Monogram, Chipotle, Duolingo and nailed agency of record relationships with Shutterfly, Tinder, EOS, Primal Kitchen and more—in total, a list that grew from 10 to more than 30 last year alone, with no losses. That growth helped the agency’s revenue soar—a whopping fivefold jump compared to 2020. 

“Year one was about doing amazing fucking work and showing the world who we are,”  said President and Partner Kerry McKibbin. “Year two was about demonstrating that doing amazing work and building a business are not mutually exclusive.”

Moving into its next phase, “we want to make sure that we aren’t just known for one-hit wonders,” said Hahn. “What we’ve evolved into is a really great strategy shop disguised as a hot creative shop.”

Top marketers Ad Age spoke with noted that the agency’s work has made Mischief impossible to ignore. 

“I remember back in the fall of 2020, they had just announced ‘Send Noods,’” said Michelle St. Jacques, chief marketing officer at Molson Coors. “As a former Kraft Mac & Cheese marketer, I was jealous of the idea.”

While the daring ideas have lured clients like moths to Mischief’s porch light—the agency’s strategy and work ethic have them sticking around. Tinder CMO George Felix said it was “hard not to notice” the agency for its string of “consistently great work.” He initially approached Mischief for a project, but the experience on that assignment ultimately convinced him to go straight to making the shop AOR. “I got to see firsthand their approach from account, strategy, and creative, and I got a very clear look at the way they work, the things they care about and how our brand could gel with their approach,” Felix said. “What many don't realize is just how strong they are strategically. They want to know the details of our business and they dig deep into our consumers and brand challenges.”

Late last year, the agency created a Tinder campaign centered on weirdos it seems no one would want to date, such as a new age mystic or a junk TV binge watcher. The point was that “you’re not for everyone,” but Tinder will help you find your someone. 

The push promoted Tinder's new “Explore” feature that allows users to discover matches by interest. Though it’s still early to determine results, the brand is already seeing “great signs [of success], including beating the industry average by two times on brand consideration, and our historical benchmarks on brand lift by 50%,” Felix said. “I really appreciate that they don't want to make creative just to get attention. They want to make creative that will drive our business, build our brand and get noticed.”

St. Jacques and her team have expanded Molson Coors’ relationship with Mischief over the last year, working together on a number of pushes such as last year’s campaign for challenger brand Miller Genuine Draft. As other brews had been flooding the market with their seltzer extensions, Mischief helped MGD jump onto the bandwagon—by making fun of it. The team helped the brand pull off its own “seltzer launch” by sending one of its competitors’ sparkly stuff all the way into space, an idea that aimed to assert MGD’s status as a “beer’s beer.” The campaign involved a real-time social push that followed the blast-off. More than a million viewers tuned into the broadcast across Miller’s channels, and the campaign resulted in a 26.7% increase in awareness among 21-to-34-year-olds, according to a YouGov poll. 

Scary thoughtfulness

Other mischievous ideas last year included the “Make It a Thing” campaign for photo service Shutterfly. The brand's largest campaign to date sought to expand its reach to a broader audience by telling the quirky stories behind custom objects that can be created on the platform—such as a mug honoring your friend who thinks Alaska is an island. 

Another push for plant-based food brand Alpha Foods centered on the idea that if plants can taste like meat, people too can rise to “extreme” challenges—as seen in a spot about a woman who successfully refrains from screaming “Horses!” when she and her partner drive by a herd of them. 

Though many of Mischief’s ideas seem out there, they’re not just creativity for creativity’s sake. “We talk a lot with our clients about how it seems like we’re getting them to do scary things,” said Partner and Executive Creative Director Kevin Mulroy. “But the scariest thing you can do is create ignorable work that’s completely useless in the first place.” 

“They’re able to bring all the creative and strategy superpower from a big agency, paired with the intimacy of a small agency,” said St. Jacques. “There are no layers. There’s no bureaucracy. There’s just the team. They are humble and just want to do great work. And they take real-life business problems and find stupidly awesome, attention-grabbing ways to answer them.”

A lot of deliberation goes into the stupidly awesome antics. “We spend a lot of time thinking about what we’re going to say before we jump into how we’re going to say it,” said Hahn. 

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When marketers work with Mischief, they can expect to be pulled in deep. “We err on the side of extra communication,” said Mischief Executive Creative Director and Partner Bianca Guimaraes. Even if that means adding more layers to the pitch process when it comes to potential new clients. “Some clients might want to just see you in two months for the final presentation, but we probe more,” she said. “We like to have all the information we need first versus going all in or all out without all the details.”

Agile idea makers

That doesn’t mean that the team can’t work fast. Soyoung Kang, CMO of Eos, first met with the Mischief team during what had been probably the darkest moments of the pandemic in 2020, when marketers were struggling to figure out how to adapt and navigate the current climate. “What really intrigued us about them was that they had big agency chops and small agency agility,” she said. “That for me is such a magical equation.”

That agility came into play when, one day last spring, Kang and her crew noticed that Eos was going viral on TikTok thanks to an influencer named Carly Joy who had created a tutorial on how to shave down there with her secret weapon: Eos shave cream. 

Kang immediately reached out to the Mischief team over email to see if they could help figure out how Eos could ride that viral wave.

“Within 30 minutes, Kerry [McKibbin] replied back and said, ‘We’re gonna have something for you in the morning,’” Kang recalled.

By 10 a.m. the next day, the agency had multiple ideas on the table. The winner? An ultra-limited edition collection of shaving products, “Bless Your F#@%ing Cooch,” imprinted with Carly Joy’s specific directions on achieving a “smooth-ass hoo-hah.”

Kang said the overall “Cooch Blessings” campaign, which branched out with an influencer push, led to 59% growth of the brand’s shave business during the time in which it ran. Subsequently, Eos debuted more out-there work with the agency, including "Vagnastics," a retro-style campaign that playfully likened shaving lady parts to ’80s-era aerobics. 

The Mis-chiefs pride themselves on a collaborative working style that glides as smoothly as a razor over an Eos-covered cooch. 

See all of Ad Age's A-List 2022 winners here.

Internally, “I think what we’ve done well so far is remove internal friction, so that creatives can get the best work out,” Mulroy said. “We’re also direct and honest with our clients. When there’s an issue, we’ll call or text and go directly to the problem instead of beating around it. And if a client doesn't like an idea, we would rather they kill it quickly. We feel confident in our ability to come up with something else."

Kang praised “the fact that they can be that responsive, that they’re thinking about the brand and the work, versus ‘This isn’t in scope' or 'That wasn’t part of our agreement.’ There’s none of that; it’s just all about the partnership and doing great work together.” 

And, in case you didn’t notice, it’s also about having a blast. “People have seemed so miserable the last few years, so it’s like, ‘Fuck! We’re just going to have fun!’” said Hahn. "We’ve all kind of forgotten that this is actually a business that you should have fun with.”

The agency’s mascot—a cat—embodies its no-fear playfulness. Hahn said it was inspired by an anecdote about  “Hound Dog,” the classic blues tune first recorded by Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton in 1952. At the end of the track, you can hear a backup singer barking. The session man later revealed in an interview that he had wanted to meow instead, but backed off from the daring idea—it was too “hip” for the crowd.

Mischief meows when the rest of the world woofs—because it's a “safe place for dangerous ideas,” Hahn wrote in the agency’s manifesto.

Preserving the magic

All the caterwauling “brought us to an altitude in the U.S. that we never saw coming,” said NFA and Mischief Co-Founder Dave Lafond, who partnered with Hahn to open Mischief as a means to expand his agency’s footprint in the U.S. “I don't think we anticipated the velocity and the volume of the work they are doing.”

Now, Mischief’s leaders are faced with the challenge of preserving the magic in the midst of rapid growth. Last year, the team more than doubled in size, jumping from 25 to 60 employees.

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“What constantly keeps me up as a leader is making sure we don’t lose our culture because I know how special it is,” Hahn said. “I’ve found that when agencies reach a certain point, they all start to blend together. I really want to create an agency that’s big and bold but that defines the industry in our own terms. It honestly comes back to knowing who we are and what we stand for, and being OK with that.”

And that means turning away business when necessary. “The biggest tool in our armory is the ability to say no,” Hahn added. “We don’t take on clients that don’t feel like they’re a good fit, even if they’re offering us a lot of money. We’d rather say ‘No’ than change.”

It also means building the team thoughtfully. “One specific thing that we look for in all of the talent that we bring on board is versatility,” said Mulroy. “We find that most of the creatives who want to come to Mischief want to work on all different types of things, whether it's different types of brands or different mediums.”

“We're looking for what I call ‘the sparkle,’” added McKibbin. “Are they passionate about ideas?”

In terms of diversity, Mischief maintains 50% female leadership at the executive level, with women comprising 55% of the overall staff. Thirty-five percent of the team identifies as BIPOC, and the agency also over-indexes relative to the general population on lesbian/gay and bisexual/pansexual staffers at 7%.

The agency invests 70% of its revenue back into talent, and those who do make it through the door must also fit into Mischief’s culture of zero ego and “unparalleled trust,” said Hahn. “Nobody’s here to prove they’re smart. It’s about making the work better, not about saying something to prove your worth.”

See all of Ad Age's A-List 2022 winners here.

Not that newcomers have to set their ambitions aside. “We want people who feel like they’re coming to Mischief to do the best work of their careers,” said Guimaraes. “They have to be passionate about what we’re building, because they’re building it together with us.”