A Mint Mobile parody.

With Deadpool & Wolverine in cinemas, US Mobile hired a fake Hugh Jackman to take on Mint Mobile. The bit: a full parody network, built for community delight.

Mint Mobile had Ryan Reynolds. We couldn’t afford the real Hugh Jackman, so we cast a fake one. The leverage was the script, not the star.

55%Past 15s · Meta

100sReddit comments · organic

4Films delivered

1Spoof network launched

[01] · The bit

Up against Mint Mobile.

US Mobile had just become a ‘super carrier’, with Dark Star added, they now ran on all three major US carrier networks. Mint Mobile owned the celebrity-endorsed playbook in US telco with Ryan Reynolds. The brief: we wanted our own.

So we rode Deadpool & Wolverine, where Jackman takes on Reynolds, and ran the same play against Mint. The real Hugh Jackman was out of budget, so we cast a fake one. I led the campaign with Luna agency, from creative ideation and scripting through post-production and final delivery.

See the Dark Star case study

Ryan Reynolds as Mint Mobile’s “Owner & User”. The celebrity-endorsed playbook in one frame.

The hero film: fake Jackman, alone to camera. He opens as Wolverine, then pivots to pitch his own network, ‘razor-sharp connectivity and ferocious data speeds’. Sign-off: don’t settle for minty freshness, go for the claws.

Claw Mobile. The stunt film. Led by me, filmed and produced by Luna.

Hook held

55%

past the 15-second mark on Meta. Past the point where most paid social gets scrolled.

[02] · More from the campaign

Three more films.

Behind the scenes. The fake-Jackman bit falls apart on set, legal panics, and the team accidentally lands the real pitch: a super carrier on all three networks.

Ahmed starts reading US Mobile’s long feature list. Fake Jackman, tired of being underused, shreds it with his claws. Sign-off: ‘tell that to my two Tonys’.

Ahmed, the real CEO, tries to land the pitch. Fake Jackman keeps making it about Wolverine. Ahmed wins the gag: Wolverine isn’t a super hero, he’s a mutant. US Mobile is the only super carrier.

[03] · Campaign storytelling

Committing to the bit.

I extended the gag with a community easter egg: anyone hunting for Claw Mobile landed on a spoof site ‘built by the star himself’, deliberately shoddy by design. A custom landing page redirected back to Ahmed, US Mobile’s real CEO, and the real deals.

A fun interaction for fans of the brand that sparked lively conversation.

The spoof site, deliberately shoddy, “built by the star himself.”

[04] · The result

The joke landed.

On Meta, the hook held: 55% past 15s. On Reddit, it ran without us: hundreds of comments. Claws out for Mint Mobile.

[05] · The takeaway

Commit to the bit, and the bit pays back.

Four films, a spoof network, the CEO clap-back. All of it for less than the cost of one real celebrity.

Three repeatable principles

Money doesn’t buy attention. The joke does.

Mint Mobile has Ryan Reynolds. We cast a fake Jackman. The leverage was the script, not the star.

A stunt needs a world to live in.

The spoof microsite, the CEO clap-back LP, and the four cuts gave the audience a universe to keep poking at. That’s what bought the Reddit thread.

Cultural timing is free distribution.

Deadpool & Wolverine was in cinemas. We didn’t sponsor it, we sat in its slipstream.

Want this for your brand?

Let’s build one just like it.

Let’s talk