Chuck Guest

Creative Lead

Chuck has worn many hats during his career, including the Chapeau of Copywriting, the Helm of Naming, and the Tam-O-Songwriting. That this coincides with hair loss is pure chance.

To some degree, we are all products of our environment. Chuck was fortunate enough to be at Hal Riney & Partners during its heyday and soaked up the folksy storytelling vibe that sold both beer and presidents. From there, clutching the Dictionary of Microprocessors, he wrote about Intel for the B-to-B arm of Chiat/Day. Then the glamor of Los Angeles called.

Shortly thereafter, Chuck found himself living in a small, dank Venice apartment with rent-control-green carpeting. The bright spot: he worked for advertising trailblazer Jean Craig at Kresser/Craig and met Paul Decker, whose iconoclastic genius rivaled that of Chuck’s other great influence: Howard Gossage.

Chuck’s last ad agency home was Young & Rubicam/SF, where he worked for nine years, primarily on the Chevron Talking Cars campaign that Adweek cited as a “Campaign of the Decade.” Once again, fortune smiled as Chuck witnessed firsthand the eloquence of then-CD Peter Angelos and the gentlemanly intelligence of Charlie McQuilkin. (You’ve got to give credit where credit’s due — even when it’s your own bio page.)

Today, Chuck is the creative lead of Prime Chuck Creative, where he strives to take everything he has learned and use it to champion the Really Good.

Erin Milnes

Project Lead

Erin has worked in media and communications for more than 20 years. She is Prime Chuck Creative’s project lead and also contributes to writing, concepting, and other creative. She’s happiest working with small organizations devoted to big ideas.

After serving several years as the first managing editor for Loyola University Press in Chicago, she worked freelance for publishers such as Microsoft Press, McGraw-Hill, Stanford University Press, Open Court, Pearson, and University of Chicago Press.

Erin spent four years as a TV and video producer before moving back to the written word to cover Northern California electric vehicle and solar energy news for the Solar Home & Business Journal.

Over her career, she has helped social justice, environmental, and arts nonprofits communicate their message. As a volunteer leader for Amnesty International and for the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, she developed workshops, publicized events, interviewed prisoners, and lead campaigns.

Erin grew up around New York but feels a citizen of the world. Her travels have involved producing a tourism video in Nepal, intensive study of Shakespeare in Oxford, enjoying opera performances around the globe, exploring antiquities in Egypt, and cataloguing human rights violations in Guatemala. After stints in Boston, Santa Fe, and Chicago, she settled in San Francisco. She now lives in Waynesboro, Virginia with her husband and son.

Erin earned a BA with honors from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, and also studied voice at Boston’s New England Conservatory with the vague idea of becoming a linguist-philosopher-poet-musician. She’s still working on that job title.

Partners

We have contacts with top creative, production, and marketing talent that you can rely on for inspiring and effective work. If there is someone you’re already familiar with that you’d like us to partner with, we play well.