Robbie Vitrano’s story is the classic boy-works-his-way-to-the-top-from-the-mailroom tale.
His father grew up in the Iberville project in New Orleans, and Vitrano—a third-generation Sicilian—was the first one in the family to attend college. He loved media, painting and writing, which led him to advertising.
His first job was for a big international ad agency in Los Angeles—in the mailroom. “I mastered changing toner cartridges and assembling desks,” Vitrano says, “then begged my way into the creative department.” Eventually, he was directing the creative team on campaigns for Isuzu, Sheraton, TransAmeric, Carl’s Jr. and Six Flags.
But then the native-son-made-good came home.
He and Pat McGuinness opened Trumpet Group in 1997 with four employees and one client. Their specialty is the national scene—either helping companies who are already there or those who aren’t get there.
Virtually every tech start-up in the city has come through their doors—iSeatz, which is one of the 100 fastest-growing firms in the country; TurboTrip, which sold to hotels.com for a reported $40 million, and some that didn’t fare so well [FastBand Globalcast, early Internet radio that was well ahead of its time]. They have handled campaigns for the likes of Gatorade, Turner/Time Warner, Darden Restaurants, RealMex and the launch of FreshDirect, a hugely successful online grocer.
Trumpet has always helped lead the charge for innovation. It helped to found and incubate the Idea Village in its office. But something happened after Hurricane Katrina.
Trumpet was among the first businesses to reopen in a city that was 80% destroyed. And the branding firm rebranded itself—?focusing its core mission on reinventing the city through conscious capitalism. Trumpet resigned from its largest national clients and threw itself into things like restoring the tourism industry, economic development, public health and safety, education reform, urban planning and coastal restoration.
“We believed the future of New Orleans and the region was entrepreneurship,” Vitrano says. “Not simply the creation of wealth and jobs, but responsible, sustainable companies that mined our culture of creativity, strengthening and enhancing it while driving necessary change. We knew this was an opportunity to shake parochial thinking and risk aversion—we knew the city would be flooded with idealistic, principled newcomers and energized, engaged citizens. No going back—we’d be the change.”
One of Trumpet’s first acts was to open the Icehouse, an old ice warehouse in a flooded area of Faubourg St. John—at the virtual center of four local, state and federally designated recovery and cultural districts. It now serves as the offices not just for Trumpet, but for eight innovative organizations—including Rehage Entertainment [producers of Voodoo Music Experience, Essence Festival and other major national events]; non-profits like Broad Street Redevelopment, New Orleans Institute and the Urban Conservancy; and high-tech start-ups like Dukky and the Gen Y recruiting site KODA.
Vitrano also now heads affiliate Trumpet Ventures, which helps early-stage companies and established brands alike scale nationally. Trumpet Ventures assumes a financial or operational position in selected start-up firms—crafting the entire go-to-market plan and leveraging its relationships in the investment world to help make it happen. It’s what Vitrano refers to as “having skin in the game.”
“The integrity of helping companies grow requires deeper involvement,” he says. “The city needs successful entrepreneurs. There was an unmet gap. Venture capitalists couldn’t or wouldn’t get involved early. Non-profit services are inadequate to fully fill the gap. As a branding firm with deep start-up experience, we decided to fill the gap with operations, revenue modeling and investor relations skills. We aligned with Tulane’s B-School and Idea Village to bring in MBA candidates as interns.”
Trumpet’s work hasn’t gone unnoticed. It has landed them on the cover of Entrepreneur, in Fast Company and in the New York Times. Eight of their clients have been recognized by City Business as Innovators of the Year. Their digital team that helped create a strategic communications platform for New Orleans tourism beat out Delta, United, Hilton, Las Vegas and other most-sophisticated destination brands around the world for Best of Show in International Destination Marketing. They also won international accolades for their work for the New Orleans Police Department when the city was gripped by a murder wave.
The way Vitrano sees it, New Orleans is a start-up Silicon Valley—and could very well be the model for a nation trying to claw its way back to a thriving economy.
“We got a four-year head start on the recession,” he says. “Business is being reinvented on the backs and brains of entrepreneurs. You can’t buy attention anymore. As such, you need to earn your place in the marketplace with very few exceptions. You cannot be successful unless you have something to say and a reputation that warrants being listened to and the ability to manage an interactive relationship. All of these things are cultural realities in New Orleans. Â That environment—plus Trumpet’s world-class talent—is a potent mix and instructive for a nation defining the way forward.”
