Marktd Talks To Robbie Vitrano Of Trumpet

New Orleans agency Trumpet has set up shop in New York City. There founder Robbie Vitrano hopes to bring some of their NOLA dynamism that has been fueled by the special circumstances back home. We asked Trumpet CEO, Robbie Vitrano, to tell us about his plans, his agency and the work he hopes to do up north.

Trumpet is expanding from NOLA to NYC. Quite a bold move - why now?

70% of our business was outside of NOLA (including clients like Fresh Direct who we launched in NY) pre-Katrina. After the storm, we made the decision to focus on home and work at the center of the recovery. After 3 years, it’s time to widen our focus. In that time, we’ve become experts at startups, launches and turnarounds, working deeply within very complex situations to design a strategic way forward, with both economic and social impacts fully considered. New Orleans is a startup laboratory.

By necessity and circumstance, we’ve developed new marketing platforms and compensation models for client/partners ranging from tourism, public health, public education, urban planning, to private sector startups and social capitalists. We’re also on our second deal in partnership with private equity funders, owing to the deeper upstream way we’re working now. We think its one way the agency model is evolving (and folks like Droga and anomaly are bearing that out). New Orleans was a perfect skunk works for it. It’s pretty MacGyver really. We’ve built a pretty cool, high performance machine.

So onto NYC, leaving the garage, out for a spin.

Partnering rather than trying to do everything yourself seems to help nimble agencies establish themselves in new markets. Is Trumpet working with any interesting partners?

Yes. We’ve always been into smart partnering. And the recipient of an embarrassment of good will. We’re developing ideas for content with our great friends at NOLA Pictures in NYC. One of their directors is a huge talent from New Orleans named Kenny Morrison and Charlie Curran who runs NOLA named his company in honor of our city after coming to orientation at Tulane with his daughter. So that’s a natural fit.

Mike Karjanaprakorn who was at Naked and then with us in New Orleans for a while before going to Behance in NYC is working with us on an event in August. We’re also partnering with women-oriented media company in NY to develop a handful of new products in partnership with a couple of major brands - we’ll be announcing that deal shortly. The door has been swung open to us by a lot of good, smart folks including Paul Woolmington at Naked, David Melancon at Ito, Stephanie Redlener at the Talent Business, Mark Trippetti who did the GreenNYC work and has devoted his company entirely to “good business,” Avi Dan and Ken Robinson at Ark have shared invaluable wisdom, and Max Schorr at Good to name a few.

We also have talked to Mike Byrne and Johnny Vulkan at anomaly about trying to do something together. Some of these will be business deals, others are pointing us to the right people. Our way and our experience has been to start with the people you respect and share motivation and inspiration with. Relationships and good business opportunities - the kind you can live with and make you whole - will happen. They already are.

What does Trumpet bring that’s going to position it as unique in the market?

Lean, hungry Startup expertise with a willingness to put skin in the game. Especially social entrepreneurs as that has been so much of our world in NOLA over the last three months. We’ve got a great team of strategists, planners, biz dev analytics, IP expertise, technologists and ready access to investors. For good or bad, we’re used to working very lean, zeroing in on the business opportunity FAST and tend to be pretty intellectually athletic out of necessity. We crack tough nuts, typically with tiny budgets but for brand-centric business ideas and people who want to scale. Post-K New Orleans has honed the model. We’ll bring our ability to vet and attach investment or we’ll partner with VCs who bake us into their deals. The ultimate thing we’re betting on is that this transcends startups to product launches within existing brands. In effect the same dynamic with the corporate brand as “VC.” So not unique in that a few folks who we deeply respect (like Droga and anomaly) are doing this.

We just think there’s not only room for us, but that this is the inevitable turn for the fee for service model, the shrinking margins and almost non-existent respect/confidence/optimism in client-agency relationships. Any other direction just seems pointless.

Trumpet have been very involved with supporting quite a few social ventures. Will your New York office continue to work on these types of projects?

If I had one wish, it would be exclusively so. Nothing motivates or inspires us more than these types of organizations. In NOLA, our new office is a 12000 sq. ft. open floor plan, former icehouse. Almost daily we feature high-minded meetings of the EcoPark, the NOLA YURPS (young urban rebuilding professionals) or SENO (social entrepreneurs network of New Orleans).

We hosted the world meeting for Worldwide Partners (the largest international network of independent agencies) and had the pleasure of plugging them into a number of social ventures around town - cool thing seeing an agency principal from Beijing, Prague and Sao Paulo counseling an African-American entrepreneur on how to launch her community workforce training program.

In New York, we’re working with Mike K at All Day Buffet, Max at Good, Stephanie Redlener, and her fathers foundation the Children’s Health Fund to connect what we’ve done very well in New Orleans to opportunities and like-minded people in New York. And Beyond.

What type of projects do you do best with what type of clients?

Startups, launches and turnarounds. Give us a big problem and a big vision. We’re willing to work very hard to figure it out. We’ve got some things to prove so we’ll take some things other people don’t have the stomach for. The thing is, we’ve managed to do this in a very difficult place and time and record two consecutive years of 200% growth and make the Inc. 5000. So we’re willing to work hard. Harder than most. Maybe harder than anyone.

Thank you. And good luck!

Trumpet