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The story of how Marion Ette, a self-described “WPPuppet,” came to lurk across communications professionals’ LinkedIn feeds this week is quite simple, said Bryce Mathias, director of digital strategy for independent advertising agency Terri & Sandy.  

The marionette puppet first appeared on LinkedIn Wednesday, wreaking havoc on the platform as it targeted holding company WPP’s staffers, encouraging them to “cut their strings” to the firm.

The idea for the social campaign came together in about a week. Terri & Sandy heard that WPP was instituting a new policy requiring employees to come back to the office four days a week. The firm saw the backlash — and petition — from WPP staffers and realized it was an opportunity to talk about being proudly independent and, essentially, to recruit good talent. 

“Even though there’s some edge to it, it was never meant to be combative against other agencies,” Mathias said. “If anything, we were standing in solidarity with the people and that fueled a lot of the executions.”

The campaign started with the Marion Ette puppet — which was purchased on eBay for an unknown price — and spiraled down a well of social accounts, identity creation and backstory to ultimately dimensionalize the puppet as the “mouthpiece” for the recruitment effort in a provocative, weird way that would grab attention. 

Terri & Sandy wanted something that had legs — literally. 

The agency invented a backstory for Marion Ette. The puppet attended “Geppetto University” and has since worked for companies such as “Work-Life Balance Is For Losers Co.,” “Never Ask For Anything Group” and “Zero Autonomy LLC.” 

He also describes himself, via his LinkedIn page, as a “highly obedient team player,” fully aligned with leadership because he “literally can’t move without it,” with the sole goal of being controlled, or hired, by WPP. 

LinkedIn was a “no brainer” platform, Mathias said, crediting Terri & Sandy CEO Sandy Greenberg’s following and presence as a “figurehead in the independent community.” It’s also a place where a lot of the conversation around pain points such as RTO are happening, he explained, versus personal social apps such as Instagram.  

While the puppet has been most active on LinkedIn, he also has a presence on Instagram (@marion_ette_puppet), where he posts daily countdowns until WPP notices him; a Pinterest account, where he’s saved various pins of general office spaces, teams and inspirational quotes; a Spotify playlist and a Letterboxd account to save movies that are “perfect for starting nauseating water cooler conversations” at his dream job at WPP — including reviews of films such as The Wolf of Wall Street and Office Space. 

In addition to begging the holding to employ it, the puppet’s accounts also center around backwardly criticizing the holding company’s latest policy that requires its workers to return to the office four days a week. The new mandate, effective in April, was announced by WPP chief executive Mark Read earlier this month. 

WPP owns agencies such as Ogilvy, Grey London and GroupM, and it’s the largest advertising group per headcount with over 111,000 staffers. Its PR agencies include Ogilvy’s PR network and Burson, formed from the merger of BCW and Hill & Knowlton last year. 

The broader message behind Marion Ette’s campaign, according to Greenberg, is to address the larger consolidation issue that’s causing companies to treat people not like people anymore. 

“When Terri [Meyer] and I started Terri & Sandy 14 years ago, one of the reasons was to be an antidote to the big agency world,” she said, citing her own experience working at holding companies that went through mergers and acquisitions seemingly overnight. “There were such morale problems back in the holding company world at the time. These kinds of issues have only become worse and worse.”

Since going public Wednesday, Marion Ette has had some wear and tear to him, filming videos of himself making the commute many WPP staff will soon be required to make daily, even visiting the holding company’s New York City office. 

“He was in pristine condition in someone’s attic and now he’s been through the ringer, which is probably how the WPP employees feel,” Mathias said. 

The puppet, and Terri & Sandy, unveiled a billboard across the street from WPP’s Wall Street office today, right outside of the Cortlandt Street subway station, with a QR code directing people back to Terri & Sandy’s website. 

In his debut video to the LinkedIn world, Marion Ette directed potential WPP defectors to Terri & Sandy’s careers page, featuring a matching marionette emblazoned with the WPP logo, where curious candidates can find job openings at the #ProudlyIndie firm. Terri & Sandy offers its staff a hybrid model, requiring they be in the office two days a week.

The puppet targeted individual WPP creative staff and their unique work in posts throughout the day Wednesday — a task that took “hours and hours” to prepare in advance, according to Mathias.

“We had to be very purposeful in how we crafted those messages and show that we were impressed by their body of work,” he explained, adding that they were very intentional to not offend the people they’re hoping to poach. 

“They were vetted through our resource person. We didn’t just randomly pick names,” Mathias added. “We found people whose books we loved, whose work that we loved, and you can see that love and that passion come through in the actual comments.”

In the last 24 hours, Terri & Sandy has received massive interest through its careers page as well as via personal texts and Marion Ette’s own LinkedIn page from applicants for the five currently available positions at the firm. One candidate even sent a playlist they believed would be created by Marion Ette’s wife as part of their application — a testament to the creativity the agency is looking for and hoped to spark through this social campaign, Mathias said. 

“That was one of our dream KPIs was to have people be creative back,” he exclaimed.

Despite the few job openings available at the moment, Greenberg said she can create a job if there’s exceeding interest or an overwhelmingly qualified candidate — another perk of being an independent firm. 

Was the agency nervous about launching a campaign targeting one of the world’s biggest holding companies? Greenberg said yes, but Mathias disagreed. 

“I felt like we were speaking truth to power, and that we were gonna be on the right side of an issue,” he explained. “Even if there was backlash, it was backlash in the way that you would hope that you’d get by standing up to somebody. Not to make this bigger than a puppet, but I feel like that’s important today.”

WPP is certainly not the first holding company or agency to require its employees return to office in-person multiple days a week. But because of the timing of the company’s announcement, followed by President Donald Trump’s federal government RTO mandate, moving fast was imperative to being part of the cultural conversation. 

“WPP is just the face of the holding company world for us,” Greenberg said, referencing Omnicom’s decision to acquire Interpublic Group as another example of consolidation at the holding company level. “While we’re targeting WPP, they’re really a metaphor for the holding company world.”

Terri & Sandy has not heard from WPP directly since the launch of Marion Ette’s page.

WPP did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this story. 

But Mathias’ “dream KPI” is still that WPP sees the campaign and in turn “sees the light” by rolling back some portion of their mandate. While he doesn’t think that will happen in this reality, he emphasized that the message is really about the people. 

“The thing that has been most exciting through this process is seeing the creativity that we’ve gotten in response, and also hearing that there are people whose lives are being turned upside down by this,” he said. “To see them reach out and to see them be like, thank you for standing with us, in a sense, and maybe even providing us an opportunity to have a more flexible future — that’s important.”

This article originally appeared on PRWeek US.