Giancarlo Pacheco started with an invitation.

An invitation is a modest piece of technology. It has to tell someone that an occasion exists, make the occasion sound worthwhile, and suggest that they will feel at home when they arrive. Long before Giancarlo Pacheco was running an advertising agency, he was working on those problems. His early audience was Asian American. The business that followed would depend on taking that audience seriously.

Today he is the founder and CEO of PCA, also known as PLAN C Agency, in Los Angeles. Its work includes campaigns for Old Spice and Olay, alongside projects that bring brands into entertainment and cultural celebrations. But his own story begins before a household name had a brief for him. It begins with students organizing, people making plans and an entrepreneur discovering how much can follow from getting people together.

An invitation before a brief

Pacheco identifies as Filipino, Chinese and Spanish American. Born in Quezon City, he grew up in San Jose and San Francisco, then studied communications at San Francisco State University, with a minor in marketing. Those subjects would become useful business tools. His involvement in community life was already giving them somewhere to land.

In 1992, he chaired NCPASO, a statewide organization advocating for young Asian college students. Three years later, he co-founded Climax Global Entertainment. The venture put on events for Asian audiences. He has described his original events business as serving Filipino Americans before widening its audience. The sequence matters: a particular community came first, and expansion followed experience with its interests.

There is a practical education inside event promotion. Someone has to decide whom to book, how to describe the night and how an invitation will travel. People can ignore the announcement. They can bring a friend. They can arrive and decide whether to return. The response has a physical form: a room with people in it, or a room with too much visible carpet.

For a future agency founder, that is useful discipline. A persuasive description cannot rescue an occasion nobody wants. A recognizable performer can create interest, but the surrounding experience still has to work. Pacheco’s later move into advertising makes sense against that background. He had been dealing with the relationship between attention and participation before those words became items in a client presentation.

“Advertising became a product of events promotions.”

Giancarlo Pacheco · 2014

Five surnames, one agency

The enterprise developed beyond individual events. Pacheco places the establishment of PLAN C Group in 2001, with activities spanning event production and music management. Jin and Far East Movement were among the artists connected with that work. In his account, PLAN C Agency followed in 2004, bringing a more formal marketing business to the Asian American demographic he had already been working with.

The name deserves a moment. PLAN C combines the surnames of the original founders: Pacheco, Lomotan, Au, Nguyen and Choi. It is a compact record of a group of people. The agency’s business card contains rather more family history than its two short words initially suggest.

That early combination of music, organizing and promotion helps explain the kind of agency Pacheco went on to lead. Culture provided the setting in which an audience could gather. Brands could become involved in that setting, provided there was a reason for them to be there. The commercial opportunity grew out of something people were already choosing to do.

By 2006, Pacheco appeared as president of Plan C Agency on the IMPRINT urban youth conference program. The lineup placed advertising alongside designers, artists, publishers and entertainment figures. It was a fitting neighborhood for someone whose work moved between community, commerce and popular culture. The agency was becoming a business with its own place in a wider conversation.

A familiar face in the commercial

Working for a large consumer brand changes the scale of the invitation. The audience may encounter the idea between television programs, in a social feed or through a short video. There is less time to establish a relationship. The question of whether people recognize themselves in the work becomes a creative decision with commercial consequences.

PCA’s Old Spice campaigns brought Asian American performers into the brand’s comic world. Ross Butler appeared in “Finer Things”; Ronny Chieng featured in later work. The agency also worked with Jamie Chung on Olay video content. These are agency projects made by teams. Pacheco’s role is to lead the business that brings cultural knowledge and client needs into the same production process.

There is room for humor in that assignment. Casting someone viewers recognize opens one door; giving that performer a situation worth watching helps keep it open. A brand still needs the audience to follow a story. Representation becomes part of the ordinary mechanics of a commercial: who appears, what happens and whose experience is treated as familiar.

Pacheco has carried his views into writing, too. In a 2015 column about endorsements, he began with the possibility of hiring Manny Pacquiao, then turned toward personal recommendations and the value of customers willing to speak for a business. The movement from a famous athlete to an everyday customer is revealing. Attention has several routes into a company. Some begin with a face everyone knows; others begin with someone a buyer trusts.

His work has also kept a live-event dimension. In 2024, PCA organized a Lunar New Year celebration with the NFL during Super Bowl festivities in Las Vegas. A cultural occasion and a sporting occasion shared the calendar. For an entrepreneur who began by bringing people together, there was continuity in the assignment, even with a different guest list.

The calendar behind the campaign

The public work is easier to photograph than the management behind it. Pacheco’s description of running an agency includes keeping talented people, managing expectations and getting several projects finished against tight deadlines. These are familiar problems to anyone who has promised a client that something will be ready on Tuesday. Tuesday has a distressing habit of arriving.

His response is deliberately practical: annual goals, clear tactical priorities and steady progress against them. He also describes setting boundaries around personal time, both for himself and his team. The point is to leave room for family and individual ambitions while accepting that the business will sometimes need more attention. A sustainable schedule requires decisions as well as good intentions.

That interest in how work gets done extends beyond agency management. Pacheco describes establishing MediaAdviser.IO, a media-planning software venture, in 2020. He has also been involved in commercial real estate through Le Pacheco Investments and in consulting under his own name. These ventures broaden the picture of a founder whose responsibilities reach beyond the next campaign.

PCA ranked No. 2,618 on the 2023 Inc. 5000. The recognition supplies one dated marker in a much longer career. More recently, in May 2026, the agency announced that eight client brands had been named to 3AF’s Impact 50. That recognition belonged to the advertisers. For Pacheco’s business, it also showed the continuing place of Asian American audiences in the work those clients were commissioning.

Nine languages, and more to learn

Ask Pacheco about happiness and the answer widens beyond business. He describes himself as naturally social, interested in meeting people and hearing their stories. Family, friends and colleagues all belong in that account. Purpose matters alongside companionship: he wants the things he does to connect with something he cares about.

“Strong connections and a clear purpose fuel my happiness.”

Giancarlo Pacheco · 2024

He gives learning a regular place in his life. In 2024, he described reading a new book each month, taking executive education classes and learning nine languages. That last detail is a statement about study, rather than a declaration of fluency. It is also an appealing addition to the portrait: an executive whose profession involves understanding audiences is willing to become a beginner in conversation.

Travel and golf figure among his interests. So does spending time with people who bring an optimistic outlook. Together, these details make the founder easier to picture beyond a title. The person running the meeting also wants to read, go somewhere unfamiliar and occasionally get out on a course. The calendar has other claims on it.

His involvement in organizing continues. In 2025, he became vice president of the Asian American Advertising Federation; the federation’s September 2026 summit again listed him in that role. There is a line from the student organization to the trade organization, though the responsibilities differ. Both involve helping people act together around interests that deserve attention.

Pacheco’s stated ambition is to expand Asian representation across media, events and advertising. Over the years, the settings have changed: a student group, an entertainment business, a client meeting, a commercial shoot. The invitation remains a useful way into his story. First, recognize the people who might come. Then make an occasion that gives them a reason to.