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AD&Co Has Been Quiet for 10 Years. Time to Bark.
Amy Demas' Culver City studio has spent a decade guiding fashion, beauty and retail brands through reinvention — without the smoke, mirrors or a single pitch-season brag
Amy Demas, CEO and executive creative director of AD&Co, started her career at 17 as a window design intern at Bloomingdale’s. A decade ago, after stints dressing Soho windows, art directing magazines and building Target’s earliest designer collaborations, she opened her own shop in Los Angeles.
AD&Co turned 10 this summer. The studio has quietly built a client list that includes Ulta Beauty, Evereve and Tumi, specializing in brand evolutions for founder-led companies and legacy retailers trying to catch up with culture. Demas likes to be in the room where the hard questions get asked.
“I like being in the room with a founder or an exec team, and just get under the hood,” she says. “That’s my favorite thing.”
Ten years in, the hood is still open.
From store windows to Target’s collab era
Demas’ path into advertising ran through retail and editorial. After FIT, window design and magazine art direction, she dove into agency life on the Target account in Minneapolis under Dave Peterson at Peterson Milla Hooks — a mentor who taught her the fundamentals of branding.
Her assignment was Target’s collaborations, right as the designer collab became a phenomenon. That skill set came west with her. AD&Co still builds collabs today, and its work recently landed a finalist spot for Best Brand Collaboration in Glossy’s fashion awards — a rare entry for a studio that almost never submits.
“It was great for our client, who’s a less well-known brand, to be in the company of some of these big guys,” Demas says.
What AD&Co is known for: walking the fine line
Brand transformation is the headline act, and it lands in two places. Founder-led brands hit a growth ceiling and need fresh strategy before competitors catch them. Legacy retailers in fashion, beauty and wellness need to reroute a big, slow-moving train.
“It takes a lot of guts by the leadership to do,” Demas says.
The subtler specialty is elevating mass brands without alienating the people who already shop there. Fashion’s instinct is to make everything feel luxe or impossibly cool, and that can backfire. AD&Co walks the line — with a research partner and strategy team keeping a sharp lens on the female consumer, from Gen Z to Boomers.
3 things AD&Co does differently
First, finding a brand’s emotional core. Creator content can lift sales, Demas notes, but it has eroded brand clarity for many companies. “There’s a lot of other people representing us right now, and it’s getting a little muddy,” she says of the question clients are asking.
Second, story over product pushing — a belief rooted in her editorial background, delivered through style-driven design.
Third, execution. AD&Co is also a studio that produces much of its own work, carrying a brand from identity through the finished piece without handing it off.
Why brands should work with AD&Co
Demas describes the shop as part consultancy, part content studio and part ad agency. The pipeline runs in that order — strategy first, then design and creative, then production.
AD&Co’s project managers plug directly into client teams, which makes ongoing work as natural as one-off projects. And because brand evolutions come with a lot of fear, she’s comfortable doing the hand-holding.
Her cure for nervous clients sounds like merchandising. “We’re going to test this product, we’re going to buy a little bit of this and see how it does,” she says. Try one initiative. Give a sleepy category its own campaign. Small bets can move the bottom line.
The power of being indie (and staying top to top)
For Demas, independence means no layers between her and the people making decisions. It lets AD&Co build its own proprietary processes, reach a diagnosis faster and help executives find a path forward without wasting time.
It also means skipping the theater. “Without the show, the smoke and mirrors of the big agency presentation,” she says, the work gets more straightforward.
Clients see the indie status as a bonus rather than the reason they call. Most come through referrals, not pitches. Word of mouth has done the heavy lifting for a decade.
Why talent chooses AD&Co
Range is the recruiting pitch. Demas’ newest hire, creative director Dara Weinberg, moved between agency work and running in-house creative at Josie Maran — including a brand transformation for Sephora. That mix of in-house, agency and editorial experience runs through the whole team.
The core crew is six to 10 people, flexing up with a senior network that has worked with the studio for years. Work is fully hybrid, and Demas calls it a long-leash culture — no clock watching, no 700 meetings a day.
Building a woman-centric agency also meant flexibility for working parents and a strong maternity policy.
Underdogs, hands down
Demas didn’t hesitate. “Underdogs, hands down,” she says.
The studio has kept its head down doing the work for 10 years and, by her own admission, hasn’t shown off nearly enough. Once people see the work, they become champions — but the agency hasn’t been loud about it.
“We could use an underdog barking strategy for sure,” she says.
Consider this the first bark. A new website with fresh work is on the way.
Dear Ulta: We’d love to go deeper
Demas’ first shout-out goes to Kelly Mahoney, CMO of Ulta Beauty. AD&Co has executed work for Ulta’s creative team, but Demas would love to get in on the strategy — she sees Ulta pushing women’s beauty and wellness forward in a fresh way.
Next up is Lume, the aluminum-free deodorant brand. Demas is simply a fan and would love to work on it.
Finally, a hello to Tom Nowak, a longtime AD&Co client CMO now at Studio McGee. She credits him with championing work and letting creatives do their thing.
“Hello, Tom.”
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