Attendees at the One Show awards last week thought they watched Mojo Supermarket founder Mo Said give an acceptance speech that began, “When I founded Mojo Supermarket four years ago I didn’t expect to win anything." Except the speaker wasn't really Mo Said.
Instead, it was an actor named Jayce Cruz who was paid to pose as Said and accept awards for Mojo Supermarket’s DojaCode campaign for Girls Who Code, which won Best of Discipline for Branded Entertainment as well as Interactive & Mobile Craft. Cruz ended his speech in lower Manhattan by inviting attendees to a party taking place at Mojo’s office later that evening.
The real Mo Said was in Brooklyn at that party, the first companywide in-person get-together since the onset of the pandemic, which Said said was accidentally booked on the same night as the iconic award show.
“We just fucked up,” Said said. “We just ended up having a party the same night. I really wanted to be here [at the agency]. We asked a couple of other people if they wanted to replace me and they said no. The One Show is amazing. It's creatives judging it, and we've made this place [Mojo Supermarket] for creatives, and if creatives are giving us this honor they also deserve a thank you speech and a Mo there. But these guys [Mojo Supermarket employees] did too, so we just had to have two Mos that day.”
The agency hired Cruz, which some people in the agency playfully refer to as “Faux Mo,” three days before the event through a casting site, which Said said wasn’t difficult. “Anyone with long hair and a beard kind of just already looks like me, so if it's the right length of long hair, it just works. He was an ethnically ambiguous, long hair bearded dude,” Said joked.
Given that he wasn’t a public figure before founding the agency and a lot of people know him from his online presence, Said figured that a lot of people wouldn’t realize if he sent an actor in his place. In fact, he said he received one text from a chief creative officer after the event saying, “I don’t think anybody realized that wasn’t you," according to Said.
Said explained he had been struggling with balancing the agency’s growth and growing notoriety with keeping true to himself and the agency, calling the situation a “big learning curve.” Mojo Supermarket has experienced significant growth over the past few years, especially last year when the shop won lead agency accounts for brands such as StockX, Truth Initiative, Match and Hydrow. The agency also grew from six employees to 61 over the last year.
“All of this is a wild ride,” Said said. “It used to just be me in my kitchen, just firing off stupid LinkedIn things. Now that we've had all this success in the last year, it's become harder and harder, personally too. I got into this place where I'm writing this thing [and I wonder] do I send it to Hannah [Benabdallah, head of communications at Mojo] first? Or do I just write it?
“The publicness of it is a lot for me and I'm learning but that night there was no contest because I so appreciate that we're getting this, but I have 61 of my favorite people in the same room dancing and I want to just dance with them and congratulate them,” Said added.
As for Cruz, he met up at Mojo's party afterward and spent the night with his faux employees.