Mischief
How to use a small story to drop a big idea
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Mischief @ No Fixed Address are kinda the hottest advertising agency in the world. Even if you neither know nor care that they were founded in 2020 by Chris Hahn (whose high profile lay off by BBDO New York during Covid waas a big ‘shit, eveything really has changed’ industry moment), you’ve likely seen or heard of stuff they’ve done:
Tinder’s ‘it starts with a swipe’ reboot; Jay-Z’s cannabis brand Monogram launch (above). Heinz’s ‘Draw Ketchup’ experiment (when asked to ‘draw ketchup’, 97% of people drew Heinz). That Eos ‘bless your f–in cooch’ viral TikTok collab thing. Turning New York billboards into donation points for Ukrainian relief efforts). They frequently mash up advertising, stunts, social media and social experiments.
Their shelves are heaving with all the glittering prizes: Adweek and Campaign agency of the year multiple times; a clutch of Cannes Lions; 19 ‘Effies’ in 2024 alone. They have a knack for work that’s fresh, attention-grabbing and just really, really effective. (Mischief mantras include: ‘people don’t hate advertising; they hate bad advertising’ and ‘make work that earns attention, not buys it’.)
The other day, I wanted to check something they’d done1 on their website. Because I am old-fashioned, I went in via their homepage2.
Straight away, you’re sucked into an infinite pink galaxy vortex thing, where chunky text flies at you, reminding you how everyone thinks Mischief are amazing…
And then something interesting happens. You pop out the other side and you get… a little story.
Actually, I couldn’t quite screen-grab the whole thing. So, here’s the text in full:
Ever heard Big Mama Thornton’s recording of ‘Hound Dog’? Great song. Would recommend.
We bring it up because, near the end, a musician is heard barking.
When asked about this seemingly inspired moment during an interview, the backup man reportedly said: ‘I was going to meow, but that was too hip for them.’
And therein lies the secret to clients surviving in today’s ever-crowded landscape.
To bark at the end of a song called ‘Hound Dog’ is clever, but not necessarily genius or unpredictable. It’s just clever enough for people to think they are buying into something creative. It’s the safe side of risky.
But to meow is inspired.
Meowing has edge, a backstory. It stays with you after the music has left.
We as an industry are often too tempted by the bark – the safe one.
Mischief meows.
Now, this is super-interesting isn’t it. The hottest agency in the world. That has the creative and technical chops to turn out genre-bending work in any media they want. Yet when they want clients to know what’s what – what do they reach for? A story. A really small one. And not even their own story – a borrowed anecdote. About a moment when something didn’t happen.
And it totally works.
How does it work?3 Let us count the ways. I notice I had literally all these thoughts in the space of the 30 seconds it took to read. It’s crazy nutritionally dense:
It’s a ‘love of the craft’ moment. Mischief are a creative agency. This is a story about creatives making work4. By spotting and sharing the story, they’re showing their understanding and attentiveness to the craft of making great work.
It’s a ‘could do better’ story. The song is great. The decision to bark is funny and good. But Mischief won’t settle: meowing would have been even better. By highlighting how the sideman didn’t have the courage of his convictions, they’re saying we’re always looking for that extra magic ingredient.
It’s vivid and pleasing on the ear. Big Mama Thornton. Dogs and cats. Barking and meowing. It’s packed with chunky sounds and sticky mind-pictures which sets it apart from the smooth language of strategy, or the portentious vibes of ‘epic story’. Woof.
It’s fresh! It’s amazing (dispiriting) how the same ‘creative parables’ get told over and over again. I have literally read references to how the shark in Jaws not working properly was a ‘creative constraint’ twice this week. Mischief are signalling that they’re drawing from their own well.
It’s no ‘hero’s journey’. This, I think, is the most interesting thing. It’s such a slight story. The story here is largely what didn’t happen. ‘Guy in the background did a cool thing, but held back from doing a cooler other thing’5. Most of us simply would not have looked twice at this, nor spotted its potential to stand for something bigger.
It’s a whole positioning. Mischief now have the implied tagline ‘don’t bark, meow’.
Most people talk a good game about storytelling, but get all tangled up in ‘grand narratives’6, when in fact the real skill is story-spotting7 – noticing that a thing that just happened, or that you heard or read, is in fact a Story You Can Save And Use Later To Make A Point.
The kicker, of course, is that you don’t just create these kinds of stories on demand – they’re collected as you beach-comb your way through life. You need your antennae up. They come from meeting and talking to people who are different to you. They come from reading and watching stuff that other people aren’t reading and watching. They come from paying attention and making connections and having that ‘oh, this thing reminds me of that other seemingly totally unrelated thing’. They come from cultivating a knack for seeing big lessons in small moment. And for doing this over and over, all the time.
Which, as I write it, sounds like most enjoyable way to live, doesn’t it.
Until next time!
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RepresentUs’s ‘deepfake dictators’ campaign to get Americans to value democracy and vote, as it happens.
Does anyone else do this? It’s polite to go in through the front door and let people introduce themselves properly, no?.
I always have a moment of doubt before I launch into this kind of dissection, and am reminded of Barry Cryer’s observation that ‘analysing humour is like dissecting a frog. Nobody laughs, and the frog dies.’
Interesting how many ‘lessons in creativity’ come from music recording sessions. Perhaps it’s something about the ‘in-real-time’ nature of musicians riffing off each other. And perhaps it’s also that there’s always a tape machine running.
In the early 2000s, I edited a magazine column that collected little items of non-news from local papers. Favourites included ‘two packets of peanuts were stolen from a building site in Dewsbury – one was salted, the other dry roasted.’
One day I’ll tell you about my theory of how brands like to imagine they’re the hero of cinematic blockbusters, when in fact they’re more like the locations of soap operas. (Less Luke Skywalker, more Albert Square.)
A few years ago, I did some storytelling workshops in partnership with a communications consultancy. The skill of ‘story-spotting’ was so central to the success of the project that afterwards, the consultancy literally changed their name to ‘The Story Spotters’.