What It Takes to Run an Agency, In the Eyes of Mojo Supermarket’s Mo Said
Interview by Trey Alston / Working Not Working Member
Way before I started as a Copywriter at Mojo Supermarket, when the idea for this recurring conversation series with creatives was in its infancy, I wanted to interview Mo Said. He gave an hour-long lecture at the One School, virtually, where it felt like talking to an old friend about what it’s like to be a creative that likes to be disruptive instead of fitting in. Mo’s the founder of Mojo Supermarket who made advertising a passion — now, he’s leading his agency into unexplored areas of creativity.
Mo grew up in Pakistan a fan of movies, music, and pretty much all things creative. After learning what advertising was from a brother’s friend, he decided to devote his life to it — eventually moving to the United States where he’d study advertising at Michigan State University and then work for agencies like BBDO and Droga5 as a Copywriter. After working for huge brands like Visa, AT&T, Google, Sprint, and Chase, but growing jaded with a glass ceiling and the idea of only remaining in advertising, Mo decided to bet on his own intuition and create his own agency to make work that would transcend time.
In the nearly three years since Mojo Supermarket has existed, the agency has hacked the Oscars, declared baseball dead for Adidas, and even designed a toilet for bad advertising. Each of its projects gets more attention than the last, and Mo wants it to become a home for creatives looking to make the most unique work of their career — while also growing the agency into something else entirely. What that is, is something that I can’t share here. It’s the nature of the mystery that comes with Mojo Supermarket, and a testament to what Mo is doing with his brand to create one of the most intriguing agencies of all time.
Here’s Mo on the formation, and ongoing operation, of Mojo Supermarket.
How did you land on advertising being the career field that you wanted to pursue?
I like playing music. I like writing music. I like writing in general. I like making movies. I like doing all these things. I lived in Pakistan, and my mom hated these things. My mom pretty much puts being a musician right next to prostitution. There's a lot of religious and cultural things that make a lot of art in Pakistan not a career that you pursue.
My brother had a friend who worked in advertising, and I went to go see him. He showed me a lot of the work and I was like, "Wait, so you just get to make movies and you just get to write these things and you get to make music? You get to do all of my favorite things, but someone pays you for it, and it sounds like marketing, which sounds like a real job?" And he's like, "Yeah." And I was like, "Sign me up. I'm in." I just got hooked, man.
What was going through your mind at the moment that you decided, "I'm going to start my own agency?”
It’s funny because a lot of people have asked me this question and I think a lot of people, in a lot of books and movies, they're always like, “It's that moment.” My “moment” was just a long period of agony where I wasn't making the work that I wanted to make. I knew that advertising could be better, right? We were making this work that was going to get forgotten about. As soon as I stopped working on it, I already forgot about it. I didn't even want to watch my own work again.
I knew I had a ceiling above me, or otherwise, I wouldn't have quit. I knew I was never going to be the CCO of Droga5, right? Because yes, there's the New York Times-type clients, but there's also clients that just straight up hate me because of where I'm from or who I am. So I was just never going to be a Chief Creative Officer anywhere else.
So it was a mixture of I was tired of the work, tired of the whole industry making work that was so boring, and then I knew that I was never going to be in a position to change that.
“My ‘moment’ was just a long period of agony where I wasn’t making the work that I wanted to make. I knew that advertising could be better, right? We were making this work that was going to get forgotten about. As soon as I stopped working on it, I already forgot about it. I didn’t even want to watch my own work again.”
I have a story about a client asking me off their business. When something like that happens to you and you've had such a great career and you've spent so much time making yourself amazing and you're like, "No, now everything is behind me, and it's all about the work. If my work is good, people will respect me." And the first time that kind of thing happens to you, you're really shaken out of your soul when you're like, "Damn, man, nobody cares about you at all. If you're not even getting to make the work that you want to make, and you're never going to get to a point where you're going to get to make the work that you want to make, then what are you doing here?"
What emotions were running through your body when you made the decision? Excitement? Fear? Happiness?
I came to the States in 2008. What's it, 2021? So I've been here, what, 13 years now? I’d been scared out of my mind for nearly the entire time I've been here. Because my thing is I made it here and I got a job. My whole point has been to get a job, make it secure, don't leave it. I was scared going to Droga5 because they used to fire creatives that they didn't like within three months. At first, when they reached out to me to interview, I said no because I was like, "Shit, I don't want to be on the streets."
I was scared for the first 12 years. Finally, I wasn't scared because I knew that people wanted to work with me finally. Adidas came to me, instead of me going out to search for a client. A lot of these people came to me. So I was at a point where I knew I wasn't going to starve, and that's all I need. Honestly, I'm not a very fancy person. You've seen me. I own like two sweatshirts and that's it. I just need to know that I won't starve. Other than that, it's all exciting.
What’s different about being a Creative Director at Mojo Supermarket than having a similar position at Droga5? What kinds of new responsibilities come with having your own agency?
It's a completely different job. People ask me all the time, "Should I start an agency?" And I always say no. Because a lot of creatives say, "I just want to find my business person, and then I'll just do the creative and they'll do the business side." What you don't understand is it's all business. Once you start an agency, it's business and you don't just get to play Creative Director. You've seen me. I don't just sit here and play creative director. I have to creatively solve this business and my client's business.
“People ask me all the time, ‘Should I start an agency?’ And I always say no. Because a lot of creatives say, ‘I just want to find my business person, and then I’ll just do the creative and they’ll do the business side.’ What you don’t understand is it’s all business. Once you start an agency, it’s business and you don’t just get to play Creative Director. ”
What are the differences? I think being a creative and being a creative director is a huge difference in the job already. I think any creative director will tell you that. Being a CCO at an agency is just like being a higher level of creative director. Being an agency owner is a completely different thing. I have to worry about finance, and I have to worry about legal, and I have to make sure that my people are happy and everyone's healthy and inspired. The difference is that a creative director is worried about the work, and I'm worried about the people. I never worry about the work. You guys worry about the work. People that work here worry about the work. I worry about the people. My project is the people here, and their project is to make the greatest agency.
Mojo Supermarket is known for its unique approach to creative. What’s the philosophy that you would say drives the work?
Our very first client came to me and said, "I want my mojo back. I want our mojo back." That's what I named this agency on.
I think the biggest thing is making something really meaningful that people don't need to be paid to watch or be a part of. Imagine finding something so interesting that you Google it to find out what it is and then want to take part in it and share it. Imagine loving to watch an ad that just makes you laugh.
“Our very first client came to me and said, ‘I want my mojo back. I want our mojo back.’ That’s what I named this agency on.”
An ad is already the worst thing that could happen to you because you're just trying to watch your Hulu show and this thing has come up and you're like, "Fuck this thing." No matter how funny it is, it can only go to being like, "That was a fun ad." But what we're doing is stuff that people are buying T-shirts for. It's the stuff that... The Savage X Fenty thing, people are having online arguments about it with other people. And the baseball thing is on the top of Reddit baseball. If you make something meaningful that matters to people, it's like thousands of times better than an ad. It's thousands of times better than the best ad in the world.
So I think that's what we're trying to make. Making really, really meaningful things. And when you make meaningful things, a byproduct of that is you get famous. Your brand gets famous. It gets written about. So I think people look at the symptom, the byproduct and say, "Fame is the thing." Fame is something that comes through when you're just meaningfully great.
What work would you say that you've been most excited that Mojo Supermarket's produced so far and why?
To be honest, Trey, this is going to be a cop-out answer. I like all of them, and that's why I like it. I've never watched baseball in my life. But people write to me, people write emails to me and say, "Hey man, thank you so much for the ad. I feel like you really understand baseball. You understand the game and you respect the game." That ad means something to someone because baseball means something to someone.
And then I'll have a young girl write to me on Instagram and say, "Hey, I watched the Girls Who Code spot. It's so important and really resonated with me. Thank you so much for making it." I love that. I love that our work matters to people that might not be me. Girls Who Code, I'm not a 16-year-old girl, right? And I'm not an old guy who watches baseball either.
So my favorite piece of work has been the diversity of work and how we're able to connect with everyone. If you really want on answer, honestly, it's hard. But Give Her A Break is obviously great. Money Toilet. But just think about how different Give Her A Break and Money Toilet are. Give Her A Break's audience being women, female creatives. And then Money Toilet's audience being advertising creatives or advertising people. They're so different tonally. Those pieces of work are so different. They work so differently, but they're so good. Both of them, to me, are so awesome. I just enjoy the diversity of perspective and still being really meaningful to someone.
You mentioned Money Toilet and Give Her A Break, which were two projects without clients. The agency has always focused just as much on internal projects as it has on work for clients. Has that always been a focus for Mojo Supermarket?
Yeah, it doesn't come from brand-building. It just comes from making cool stuff that I want to make. Give Her A Break came from having a cousin who's a director and she's been fucking working her ass off in this whole industry. She's a brown female director and she hasn't gotten her shot.
I was having lunch with her and she was saying, "It's so sickening that this is happening. So many good films got made by women, and none of them got spotlighted." And I saw that conversation, I saw that frustration in her, and I was like, "Hey, I'm going to do something about this." I went to work and I was like, "Hey, we've got to do something about this, by the way," and then we did it. So I think if it's things that matter to us, we make projects. We're creative people. We just solve problems. We solve problems on things that matter to us.
For Trump's first election, I made these Muslim identity jackets and these signs around New York that said, "Muslims must wear identity jackets whenever they're out." Because he actually said something like that. So I wanted to show people what his presidency would look like if you let a crazy person into office.
And then when United dragged off customers off their plane because they had overbooked it, I made this thing where you could boycott United, and United lost a million dollars because of something I made. So I've always been involved. Things that matter to me or things that I want to speak up about, I do.
Money Toilet feels like a self-branding thing, but it's also just I hate bad advertising. So that's just a point of view that I have, and I want to say something about it. So Give Her A Break and Drop United and all of these things, the jackets, the Money Toilet, it's just something I have a point of view on and I want to say something. But I don't make a TV show or I don't write songs, so it comes out as these weird art projects.
All right, the last question I have for you is just your general goals for the future of Mojo. What do you see it looking like, and how do you project the company to keep growing?
The first answer is just the home of the greatest creative people. It's a great home for creative people. It's going to be the place that creative people come in and make the best work they've ever made and solve problems, whether those are people problems, right? Like the Oscars problem is not a brand problem, it's a problem we have in society that we're trying to fix. And then Money Toilet is similar. But then there's industry problems and we might solve a problem for Netflix, their business. We might solve a problem for our business. But creatives coming together to solve problems. This has to be the greatest home, coolest home for the best, weirdest, most different creatives.