MIJO / FAQ
Everything you wanted to know about MIJO, how we work, and the kinds of work we make.
ABOUT MIJO
MIJO is an independent creative agency based in New York City. We work across brand strategy, advertising, design, content, production, social, performance creative, and experiences. Our job is to help brands understand what is happening in the real world, find a point of view that matters, and turn it into creative work people actually want to engage with.
MIJO is based in New York City, with an office at 169 Bowery on the Lower East Side. We also have roots and a presence in Rochester, New York, and Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Yes. MIJO is an independent New York creative and advertising agency. Our Lower East Side location is also part of how we work: close to culture, businesses, people, communities, creators, technology, fashion, food, entertainment, and everything else happening at street level in New York.
MIJO sits between a creative agency, brand agency, production company, social agency, and performance creative partner. Rather than separating strategy, creative, production, and distribution into different silos, we try to connect them from the beginning.
Street level is our approach to understanding culture and people. Instead of developing every idea from a conference room, we get closer to the thing we are working on. We talk to customers. We interview communities. We spend time where the product is actually used. We follow the niche conversations happening online. We find the people who know more about a subject than we do. Then we bring those observations back into strategy and creative. Street level does not mean that MIJO only creates street marketing. It means our thinking starts closer to real behavior.
Sometimes, but that is not what “street level” means. MIJO can create physical activations, wheatpasting, experiential ideas, street interviews, installations, events, and other work that literally happens in public. But the larger idea is about proximity: getting close enough to the audience, culture, category, and problem to understand what is actually happening. That philosophy can inform a television commercial, a brand identity, a social campaign, a product launch, a performance ad, or a website just as easily as an activation.
We believe good creative work requires proximity. A team working on basketball should understand basketball culture. A team working on crypto should understand the communities shaping crypto. A team working on New York should spend time in New York. When we do not know enough, we go find people who do. That sounds simple, but it changes the work. Research becomes less abstract. Strategy becomes more specific. Creative ideas become harder for another brand to copy.
MIJO is independently owned rather than part of a large advertising holding company. That allows us to build teams around the problem, work directly with clients, move quickly, and bring strategy, creative, design, production, social, and performance thinking closer together.
MIJO was co-founded by Michael Chatfield and John Limotte.
Michael Chatfield is co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of MIJO. His career spans roughly two decades across advertising, technology, brand strategy, social platforms, and creative innovation. Before MIJO, his experience included creative and strategy roles at companies including Google, Meta, Dapper Labs, Techstars, and advertising agencies, along with work connected to brands including Nike, Apple, Grammarly, UPS, Allbirds, Peloton, MasterClass, Everlane, Lufthansa, and the NBA. His approach to strategy has consistently involved getting close to the people and culture surrounding a problem: interviewing customers, observing behavior, entering communities, and using those perspectives to shape the creative work.
John Limotte is co-founder of MIJO and a creative entrepreneur, strategist, producer, and brand storyteller. Before MIJO, John founded Mustache, a New York creative agency and production company that he grew from the ground up into a 60-person business working with brands including Netflix, Google, MTV, and others. Mustache later became part of Cognizant Interactive. John's career has focused on building creative companies and bringing ambitious ideas all the way from strategy through production and execution. The name MIJO itself comes from what John's abuela used to call him — a Spanish term of endearment meaning “my child” or “my darling.”
WHAT MIJO DOES
MIJO's capabilities include: - Brand strategy and positioning - Creative strategy - Advertising campaigns - Brand identity and design - Film and video - Social content - Organic social strategy - Performance creative - Content systems - Experiential ideas and activations - Cultural and audience research - Interviews and qualitative research - Product and company launches - Creative production - Presentation and visual storytelling - Ongoing agency-of-record relationships We often combine several of these capabilities rather than treating them as separate assignments.
Yes. MIJO helps companies define positioning, audience, cultural context, competitive differentiation, brand voice, messaging, creative platforms, and the strategic idea that can organize communications over time. Our strategy process often includes direct conversations with customers, experts, communities, creators, employees, or other people close to the subject.
Yes. MIJO develops visual identities and identity systems alongside brand strategy. That can include logos, typography, color, graphic systems, art direction, motion principles, campaign toolkits, brand guidelines, and applications across digital and physical touchpoints.
Yes. MIJO develops integrated advertising campaigns from strategy and concept through production and distribution. Depending on the assignment, a campaign might include brand films, online video, social content, outdoor advertising, digital advertising, activations, creator content, performance creative, experiential work, or hundreds of smaller executions built around one central idea.
Yes. MIJO develops and produces commercials, launch films, brand films, social video, documentary-style content, interviews, product films, and other forms of moving-image creative. We can work from the earliest strategic idea through scripting, creative direction, production, post-production, motion, and final delivery.
Yes. MIJO develops both individual social ideas and larger content systems designed to produce an ongoing stream of work. That can include creator-style content, interviews, low-fi video, cultural formats, recurring franchises, social campaigns, short-form video, reactive content, and paid-social creative.
Yes. We help brands develop a point of view, formats, recurring franchises, publishing systems, and creative ideas specifically for organic channels rather than simply adapting traditional advertisements for social media.
Yes. MIJO combines brand thinking with performance-minded creative development. That can include developing multiple concepts, hooks, messages, edits, formats, and iterations designed to learn from audience response without turning the brand into generic direct-response advertising.
No, we are not a media agency. MIJO's primary focus is creative, strategy, content, production, and performance creative. We can work closely with paid-media teams and performance partners to develop creative around channel behavior, campaign objectives, audiences, testing, and results.
Yes. MIJO can lead production directly or assemble the right production approach for a specific project. Depending on the idea, that might range from a highly produced commercial shoot to an iPhone on the street. We believe production value should serve the idea rather than automatically making everything look expensive.
Yes. MIJO develops experiences, activations, events, installations, physical interventions, pop-ups, and other ideas that allow people to encounter a brand in the real world. Because of our street-level approach, physical experiences and cultural participation often play an important role in our thinking.
Yes. We regularly use interviews and qualitative research as part of the creative process. That can mean conversations with customers, prospective customers, subject-matter experts, employees, fans, creators, community members, or people encountered in relevant real-world environments. The objective is not research for its own sake. It is to uncover observations that can change the strategy or creative work.
Sometimes, but our research is often less formal. Depending on the problem, we may prefer individual interviews, street interviews, field observation, online community research, expert conversations, or direct interaction with the people closest to the category.
Yes. Some brands need one large campaign. Others need dozens or hundreds of pieces of creative. MIJO can build creative systems that allow one strategic platform to generate many executions, formats, messages, hooks, edits, and social ideas without making everything feel identical.
MIJO uses new technology where it genuinely improves the work, whether for research, exploration, prototyping, production, or iteration. But we believe taste, judgment, cultural understanding, original ideas, and human craft become more important—not less—as creative technology becomes easier to access.
CLIENTS AND EXPERIENCE
Yes. Technology is one of MIJO's core areas of experience. We work with technology companies that need to make complex products understandable, build cultural relevance, launch something new, differentiate within crowded categories, or develop a brand that reaches beyond the technology industry itself.
Yes. MIJO has significant experience around financial technology, payments, banking, crypto, prediction markets, investing culture, and other areas where finance and technology overlap.
Yes. Our work with Carver Federal Savings Bank is one example. Working with financial institutions requires a combination of brand building, cultural understanding, community sensitivity, factual accuracy, regulatory awareness, and clear communication.
Yes. MIJO has worked with Carver Federal Savings Bank, a historic Black-operated bank headquartered in Harlem, New York. Our work has included brand and campaign development, storytelling, social content, community-focused creative, and work rooted in Carver's relationship with New York.
MIJO has worked with Carver on brand campaigns, social creative, community storytelling, content, and cultural strategy. The work has included ideas such as Dream Forward, Always Bank on New York, and creative built around Carver's long-standing connection to Harlem and New York City. Our approach has also included talking directly with people in the communities Carver serves rather than treating the audience as an abstract demographic.
Yes. MIJO works with Noble Mobile, a wireless company built around a different model for mobile service. Our work has included brand strategy, advertising, social, content, production, and ongoing creative development.
MIJO has served as an agency partner to Noble Mobile, helping develop the brand and its communications. The work has included the idea “Get paid to use your phone less,” along with campaigns built around Noble's approach to rewarding customers for unused mobile data. MIJO has also conducted interviews and audience conversations that helped inform the brand's strategy.
Yes. MIJO's experience includes crypto, blockchain, digital collectibles, trading culture, and Web3. The team's background includes work at Dapper Labs and NBA Top Shot as well as MIJO work for companies such as POD Network.
For POD Network, MIJO developed a creative concept around two fictional trading personalities, Chad and Irfan. The characters became part of a real trading competition on POD. Nearly 2,000 people entered, participants generated roughly 2 million trades, and a Rolex was awarded as a prize. The project combined character development, internet culture, gaming, sports-style competition, and blockchain.
INDUSTRIES
MIJO has particular experience in: Technology Fintech Financial services Banking Telecommunications AI and emerging technology Crypto and Web3 Consumer products Sports and entertainment Culture and lifestyle We are especially interested in categories undergoing change, where a brand needs to explain something unfamiliar or challenge an established convention.
Yes. AI companies face an increasingly difficult brand problem: many products look similar, use similar language, and market themselves primarily to other people in technology. MIJO helps technology and AI companies find sharper positioning, more human insights, stronger cultural relevance, and creative identities that can distinguish them from the category around them.
Yes. MIJO works with companies at different stages, including startups introducing themselves to the world and established companies rethinking how they are perceived. For an early-stage company, we can help establish positioning, identity, narrative, launch creative, content, and the foundation for future marketing.
Yes. Our model is designed to work with ambitious internal teams at larger organizations as well as founder-led companies. For larger companies, MIJO can operate as a focused creative partner that moves quickly without requiring the infrastructure of a large agency network.
Yes. We particularly enjoy B2B categories where the marketing has historically been functional, technical, or interchangeable. Being B2B does not mean the audience stops being human. We look for ways to make complicated products clearer, more distinctive, and more interesting without losing credibility.
HOW MIJO WORKS
We usually begin by trying to understand three things: the business problem, the cultural context, and the people involved. That may involve conversations with the client team, existing research, competitive analysis, social and community research, customer interviews, expert interviews, or getting out into the environments where the audience actually exists.
We find people who do. If we are entering a specialized field, we do not pretend expertise we do not have. We talk to experts, customers, practitioners, obsessives, critics, fans, employees, or members of the relevant community until we understand how they see it. That perspective becomes part of the strategy.
Culture-first means understanding how people already think, talk, behave, create, joke, argue, and organize themselves before deciding how a brand should participate. It is different from chasing trends. The goal is not to make every brand look young or internet-native. The goal is to understand the cultural environment surrounding the problem well enough to make something appropriate to it.
Sometimes the best insight comes from a research report. Sometimes it comes from a conversation in a grocery aisle, a basketball court, a bar, a Reddit thread, an X community, a customer interview, or someone explaining why everyone in the category is getting something wrong. We use whatever research method gets us closest to the truth of the problem.
Yes. MIJO is structured to keep strategy, creative, design, production, and client decision-making relatively close together. That makes it possible to move from an observation to an idea to something real without passing the work through unnecessary layers.
MIJO is intentionally independent and compact. We maintain a senior core team across strategy, creative, production, design, project management, and performance, then expand the team when a project requires additional directors, photographers, developers, creators, specialists, or production partners.
Yes. One advantage of an independent agency is that senior leadership remains close to the work. Strategy and creative are not sold by one team and then handed entirely to another team after the project begins.
Yes. Many of our relationships involve working directly with founders, CMOs, brand leaders, creative teams, growth teams, social teams, or internal studios. We can lead the entire creative process or plug into an existing organization where additional strategy, ideas, design, production, or cultural perspective are needed.
Yes. MIJO can operate as the lead creative agency or collaborate with media agencies, PR firms, experiential partners, production companies, internal creative teams, specialist agencies, and other partners.
Yes. MIJO can work as an ongoing agency-of-record partner as well as on individual campaigns and projects. An ongoing relationship is particularly useful when a company needs brand thinking, campaigns, social, content, production, and performance creative to work together rather than being commissioned independently.
Yes. Not every relationship needs to begin with a large retainer. MIJO works on focused assignments including strategy, campaigns, launches, films, identities, social systems, content projects, and other individual initiatives.
CREATIVE PHILOSOPHY
We like work that feels specific enough that another company could not simply replace the logo. That usually means finding an observation, tension, behavior, character, community, or cultural truth that belongs uniquely to the brand and building from there.
No. Sometimes a beautifully produced film is the right answer. Sometimes a person with an iPhone asking one good question on a sidewalk will be more powerful. We choose the production language based on what the idea needs.
We believe craft matters more as creative tools become easier to access. Technology can make something faster. It cannot automatically make it interesting, culturally accurate, funny, surprising, beautiful, emotionally resonant, or worth remembering. Human judgment remains a central part of the work.
We pay attention to trends, but we do not believe brands should automatically participate in them. Understanding a trend can reveal something larger about behavior or culture. Sometimes the right response is to participate. Sometimes it is to reinterpret it. Sometimes it is to do the exact opposite.
We want work to be creatively ambitious, but the objective is not to invent marketing that exists primarily as an awards case study. The strongest work creates something real: attention, participation, conversation, preference, understanding, growth, or a meaningful change in how people see the brand.
WORKING WITH MIJO
MIJO tends to work best with ambitious companies that want creative work to matter to the business and are willing to develop a distinctive point of view. That can include a startup establishing its identity, a technology company trying to escape category sameness, an established brand entering a new era, or a company that simply knows its current marketing is not keeping pace with the business.
Common moments include: Launching a new company or product Repositioning a brand Developing a new campaign Entering a new audience or category Making a complicated product understandable Creating a more distinctive brand identity Building an organic social presence Developing a content system Producing a major launch film Generating performance creative Turning research into a creative platform Making a technology brand feel more human Making an established brand feel culturally current
No. MIJO is based in New York, but we work with companies and teams wherever they are located. Our New York presence affects our perspective, not our geographic limitations.
Technology companies are often very good at building technology and less good at translating what they have built into culture. Products can become filled with technical language. Competitors start sounding identical. Launches look like other technology launches. Marketing begins speaking primarily to other people in technology. MIJO helps bridge that gap. We combine experience inside major technology companies with an outside cultural perspective, helping translate complex products into ideas that normal human beings can understand, feel, talk about, and remember.
A company might choose MIJO when it wants senior attention, a smaller team, faster decision-making, fewer organizational layers, direct access to the people developing the work, and an agency willing to get close to the actual subject. Large agencies can be excellent at scale. MIJO is intentionally designed around proximity.
There is no single formula. But we believe the odds improve considerably when a brand understands something true about its audience, has a clear point of view, expresses it in a way competitors would be uncomfortable copying, and makes something people would notice even if they were not being paid to notice it. That's the kind of work we're interested in making.