Independent agency Mojo Supermarket said Tuesday it is doubling down on strategy, promoting Ryan McDaid and hiring Nika Rastakhiz as co-heads of the department.
McDaid joined Mojo Supermarket a year ago as group strategy director from Samsung, where he helped build its internal brand studio. Prior to that, he was at Droga5.
Rastakhiz comes from Anomaly, where she built the LA office’s strategy department.
Strategy is an important discipline for Mojo Supermarket, which specializes in helping brands “push culture out of its comfort zone,” McDaid said. That looks like, for instance, the campaign Mojo developed on behalf of anti-nicotine initiative Truth, which describes a vaping device as a “Depression Stick.”
With the campaign, Mojo helped the organization pivot from being “an anti-smoking brand to being a pro-mental health brand,” McDaid said.
“The first act from them was to get culture to call a vape exactly what it is, which is a Depression Stick,” he said. “That got culture to wake up, get uncomfortable and confront what vaping really is.”
McDaid will have greater opportunity to give culture a shove in the new position, alongside his co-head of strategy, Nika Rastakhiz.
“Together they’re the best of both worlds of strategy,” Mo Said, Mojo founder and creative director, stated in an email to Campaign. “Ryan can get to cultural, insightful ideas that can change the way people think. And Nika can come up with ways to help transform our clients’ business.”
Before joining Mojo, Rastakhiz worked on a campaign for Civic Nation’s When We All Vote initiative, which was created by former First Lady Michelle Obama.
“They asked us, ‘How can we get Gen-Z’s to think that voting is cool?’ ” Rastakhiz recalled.
While strategizing on the brief, her team was inspired by a quote from Obama: “You wouldn’t give your grandmother the power to decide what clothes you wear to the club. You wouldn’t give your crazy uncle the power to post a picture to your Instagram feed. So, why would you give a stranger the power to make far more important decisions in your life?”
What resulted was the Vote Loud campaign, which told young people that if they didn’t vote, the only people to have a voice would be cranky people with outdated views.
“That was something really powerful,” said Rastakhiz. “We were able to tap into a real consumer and cultural tension.”
As the co-heads of strategy, McDaid said he and Rastakhiz plan to continue to take the same approach with brands. They also will help Mojo develop its own intellectual property in addition to client work, he said.
“Part of that is creating the briefs that we would make internally to generate our own IP — whether that’s entertainment or products — things that will bring Mojo back into culture and the creative community at large,” said McDaid.
Rastakhiz said that she and McDaid will also work to determine Mojo’s north star and strategy, in the same way it would for clients.
She explained, “Once we unlock that, thinking about things like IP and sharpening company culture are hopefully going to be that much clearer.”