When Parker Channon co-founded his agency, Nirvana’s “Nevermind” was still in heavy rotation in the office. That dates the place well enough. Thirty-plus years later, Duncan Channon has watched the rest of San Francisco’s indie scene rise, sell and scatter — Butler Shine, BSSP, Pereira O’Dell, Venables Bell, Heat, Eleven — while quietly building a practice around the assignments most shops would rather skip.
“We’re most known for working with brands or causes facing some kind of negative narrative,” Channon says. “Some strong headwinds.”
That sentence does most of the work.
Carbon offset credits for the ad industry
The throughline started 12 years ago when the California Department of Public Health came knocking. Vapes had just arrived in the United States, marketed as a miracle that would save tens of thousands of lives a year. The science said otherwise. “Another tentacle of big tobacco,” as Channon puts it.
Duncan Channon got good at it. San Francisco eventually banned flavored vapes, and the state gave the agency a chunk of the credit. From there came fentanyl awareness for kids, a COVID vaccine push aimed at Black and brown communities who — reasonably — didn’t trust the government to begin with, and a steady drumbeat of clients with the same shape of problem and different details.
“Advertising is not exactly the Lord’s work,” Channon says. “It’s good to have these carbon offset credits.”
The PG&E surprise
Then came PG&E, whose headwinds, Channon admits, were “maybe more self-inflicted.” The agency liked the new team in charge, took the assignment, and built a campaign that did something most utility advertising would never dare — handed the microphone to customers and let them have the final word.
Awkward by design. Low-fi by design. When myths started flying, the team turned around Zoom-shot rebuttal ads for a couple grand apiece. Brand trust climbed 17%.
The win cracked open the next assignment, which Channon was mid-interview waiting to hear about — another cause currently being attacked by the White House. “If I’m suddenly elated or suddenly sullen, you’ll know the news came.”
A roster built for weirdos
Inside the shop, the hiring is intentionally strange. Executive creative director Jessea Hankins is a practicing witch, a celebrated poet, a published YA novelist, an insane gamer and a sometime wearer of bonnets. That’s the lifeblood, Channon argues — the people who can tap into the unexpected fast enough to make a relevant message land.
The agency runs flat. Creative directors are still writing copy. There’s no bench, no apprenticeship and no patience for the kind of CD whose day involves evaluating work over a long lunch.
“We have a small pool, and we only have a deep end.”
Phoenix energy
Fewer than 100 people. A San Francisco mothership and an LA office that came with the A2G acquisition seven years ago — bought to pull influencer and experiential work in house before the partner workarounds got embarrassing.
When everyone else was bailing on San Francisco during the doom spiral, Duncan Channon re-upped its lease. “San Francisco is too cool to ever die,” Channon says. The agency’s symbol is a phoenix.
For a shop that has spent three decades collecting sleep-on credit in an embarrassment-of-indie-riches town, that tracks. The pitch to whoever calls next is simple: when the narrative goes sideways, Duncan Channon already has the playbook.
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