Malcolm Schwarzenbach
Malcolm is a 21-year veteran of marketing and marketing communications on both the agency and client side of the business. He provides strategic analysis and consultation on behalf of his clients, and executes these concepts into reality. Past accounts include Eli Lilly and Company, Hitachi Telecommunications, Amoco Foam Products, Abita Springs Water Company, the Audubon Institute, and Pellerin Milnor Corporation. As a Marketing Director in Charlotte, Malcolm managed a $1.3 million international advertising and public relations budget.
Upon returning to his native New Orleans, Malcolm managed the team responsible for the highly successful launch of Harrah's New Orleans Casino in October 1999. Malcolm joined Trumpet in December 1999 to provide strategic guidance for such notable campaigns as The Oath, Tenet Health-System, Darden Restaurants' Bahama Breeze brand, among many others.
Brandi Trippi
Brandi joined Trumpet shortly after Hurricane Katrina and has been a vital member of our team ever since. She handles every aspect of client billing, from sending and processing invoices, payment of vendors, media reconciliation and budget allocation. When Brandi is not holding a calculator, she enjoys theatre, illustration and photography. Brandi has an extensive Arts background working with companies such as Southern Rep Theatre, New Orleans Opera Association and the Saenger Theatre. Currently, Brandi is working on a certificate in Digital Design from Tulane University.
Erin Hall
Erin has been with Trumpet for three years. In addition to managing the office, she is responsible for trafficking all creative jobs through the agency. She tracks all client projects from inception to successful completion by running weekly office-wide status meetings and communicating daily with Brand Managers and Creative Directors on the progress of each project, handling any needs that may arise and adjusting schedules accordingly.
Benjamin Bellayuto
Benjamin Bellayuto is originally from Texas. After attending Loyola University in New Orleans he continued his education at the Miami AD School, studying and interning at creative ad shops around the globe, including Crispin Porter and Bugusky and Strawberry Frog Amsterdam. He landed his first job right out of school as an art director at Venables Bell and Partners in San Francisco. There he worked on HBO, Audi, Slim Jim, and Orville Redenbacher under the direct guidance of Greg Bell and Paul Venables. After two years Benjamin continued on to freelance in San Francisco at major agencies working on clients like Muscle Milk, and Kashi Foods. Ben has recently returned to his college roots finding a home as a full time art director at trumpet. He has been featured in the Graphis advertising annual, and won numerous industry awards.
Pat McGuinness
A founding partner of Trumpet, Pat is responsible for the development of Trumpet's creative product for all clients, ensuring that all strategic and production details have been considered before sending advertising out into the world. He has been recognized with the most important awards for creativity in the advertising profession—from London to New York. Credits include The One Show International, London Design & Art Direction, Communication Arts Advertising Annual, New York ANDYs and National ADDYs. Through his 20+ years in the business he has worked on a broad range of clients, including: Chevy's Fresh Mex, Bahama Breeze (Darden Restaurants), Emeril's, Ruth's Chris Steak House, El Torito Restaurants, Wendy's, Fresh Direct and Zagat.
Brett Bergeron
Brett leads the creative development of all digital products from concept to delivery. A former design instructor at Louisiana State Unviersity, Brett's primary teaching interest focused on the use of design and technology to remove local, regional, cultural and linguistic barriers to digital content. He continues this passion for web standards at Trumpet, where he provides our creative team with an acute understanding of the complexities involved in interactive media.
Jenny Dalton
As Director of Project Management & Workflow, Jenny is responsible for developing and executing all workflow processes within the agency. Jenny led the team responsible for Trumpet's work for Real Mex Restaurants, a family of 11 restaurant brands, including Chevy's, El Torito and Acapulco restaurants. She also led strategic development for the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau "Forever New Orleans" campaign. This involved coordination with many of the tourism entities in New Orleans in an effort for them to incorporate the campaign into their own marketing plans. Jenny was responsible for managing the development of all marketing efforts for the NOCVB, including 24NOLA.com, which was honored with a Platinum Adrian Award from HSMAI and went on to win Best of Show.
Jason Hammel
Growing up in New Orleans, a city with a myriad of cultural influences around every corner, it's no wonder why Jason Hammel is a designer. His passion for design stems from the belief that design touches our lives every second of every day. "It's in the buildings we pass, the way we dress, the products we buy—it's everywhere." Jason honed his design skills at The Portfolio Center in Atlanta. After graduating in 2001 with a degree in design, Jason felt that there was no other place he'd rather be than back home designing in the city he loves. For the past 10 years, Jason has designed award-winning work for numerous clients such as the Voodoo Music Festival, Louisiana Superdome, Safeguard Self-Storage, and the New Orleans Riverfront Development.
Weston McWhorter
Trumpet's Sr. Interactive Producer, Weston McWhorter, is a designer and developer currently living and working in the modern renaissance enclave of New Orleans, LA. An autodidact by nature, he found himself immersed in interactive design and front-end coding upon arrival in pre-millennial New York City. Quickly making forays into the open source world of PHP, MySQL and Flash development, he has created solid interactive solutions for a diverse range of clients including Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Universal Music Group, investment promotion agencies in the countries of Iraq and Turkey, and the State of Louisiana's Office of Tourism. Mr. McWhorter serves as an adjunct professor at Loyola University in New Orleans teaching UI design, Information Architecture, and the fundamentals of web design to junior and senior design majors. Additionally, he is currently serving as president of the New Orleans chapter of AIGA - the professional association for design.
Dustin Kingsmill
Dustin started with Trumpet as an intern and, in light of his pending graduation from Tulane, has been brought on full-time as project manager. Dustin has helped manage social media outreach, branding, connection planning, brand ambassadorships, street teams, media placement, and a variety of other traditional and nontraditional projects. Before he arrived at Trumpet, Dustin's passion for food carried him around Spain for six months, where he studied business while also learning both the Spanish language and its regional cuisines.
Jude Chauvin
Since taking the helm the day New Orleans was struck by Hurricane Katrina, Jude has helped lead Trumpet through its most profitable year and first listing on the Inc. 5000, the renovation and repurposing of a 1920's era icehouse as the company's headquarters, and the development of new core expertise in digital and social media.
Before Trumpet, Jude lived and worked in New York City. His work at Madison Square Garden included financial oversight for two MTV Video Music Awards shows, the Tony and Daytime Emmy awards shows, and countless concerts and entertainment events at the Garden and Radio City Music Hall. Prior to that, Jude was a principal in a successful artist management company, helping launch the careers of multiple Grammy winners. A former military officer and Louisiana native, Jude attended Tulane University on a Navy ROTC scholarship, earning an M.B.A. in finance and a B.A. in political science concurrently through a joint degree program.
Abigail Lunetta
Abigail serves as wordsmith for Trumpet, spending most of her time writing and editing copy for various print and digital media. She is primarily focused on formulating, organizing and executing content strategy for the web. Both her fiction and non-fiction has been published in numerous publications ranging from local periodicals to nationally circulated publications.
A recent addition to the Trumpet team, Abigail graduated cum laude from Louisiana State University with a dual degree in Anthropology and Creative Writing, and has spent four cumulative years studying Spanish.
Erica Normand
With over 10 years of marketing and public relations experience, Erica Normand has been a part of the public relations team at Trumpet for nearly two years. Some of her accounts include MiLa, La Cote Brasserie, and Bar UnCommon, working directly with General Manager of the New Orleans Renaissance Hotels.
Upon completing an undergraduate business degree in Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism, she joined a New Orleans-based firm specializing in hospitality and restaurant marketing and promotions. Previous clients include New Orleans Wine and Food Experience, Cochon, Herbsaint, Muriel's Jackson Square, Gabrielle, Savvy Gourmet, 7 on Fulton, Cobalt, St. Christopher Best Western, Sheraton New Orleans, J.W. Marriott and Marriott Metairie at Lakeway.
Lauren Card Wegmann
Lauren's primary role at Trumpet is to serve as a link between clients and the creative team. Although she specializes in managing Trumpet's interactive accounts, she has over 3 years experience managing offline campaigns including, the Louisiana Campaign for Tobacco Free Living, the New Orleans Hornet's 2007 Post Katrina Campaign, Louisiana Economic Development's national outreach campaign, and the 2008 recruitment campaign for the NOPD.
Although always acting as liason, Lauren also performs the role of strategist, budget manager and timeline enforcer. Prior to her work at Trumpet, Lauren was the Advertising Coordinator for Reginelli's, a Louisiana franchise of pizzerias.
Matt McGuinness
Matt McGuinness is a New Orleans native who got his start in the business as a copywriting intern at Bauerlein Advertising. He left New Orleans for a couple of years to work for a small agency in Lafayette, but returned to become one of three original Trumpet employees. Matt worked with Trumpet for a year until he left in 1998 for West-Wayne Advertising, where he had the opportunity to work for creative heavyweight Luke Sullivan on accounts like Denny's, Roadhouse Grill, Toyota, Celebrity Cruises, The Sports Authority, Russell Athletic and Publix Supermarkets, to name a few. He left West-Wayne as a Vice President / Associate Creative Director in 2004 to return to his roots and his friends at Trumpet. Recent projects have included work for Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, RealMex Restaurant Group, and MiLa and La Cote Brasserie Restaurants.
Matt's work has won a lot of awards, most recently at ShowSouth, and has been featured in the Graphics advertising annual, as well as other industry publications.
Scott Couvillon
Scott joined Peter A. Mayer Advertising in his hometown of New Orleans after graduating from Springhill with a B.A. in advertising in 1996. After two years on traditional accounts, Scott moved to San Francisco and joined Foote, Cone and Belding Worldwide on the AT&T Wireless business, moving from regional campaigns to sports marketing, eventually becoming account supervisor on the national brand component of the $150M brand repositioning in 2001. From there, he transitioned to Yum Brands' Taco Bell, handling product innovation as part of the highly touted "Think Outside the Bun" campaign.
In 2003, Scott returned to his hometown and worked on regional campaigns for Community Coffee, Popeye's, Zatarain's, Ruth's Chris Steak House, anti-tobacco and economic development. He joined Trumpet in an effort to bring his strategic development experience together with their historically award winning creative.
Danny Bourgeois
Since joining Trumpet in 2008, Daniel has advanced the interactive department service offerings anchored in social media marketing, development, and content strategy. Current work includes thriv Natural Performance, Seaside, and Bruise Relief.
For the last 15 years, Daniel Bourgeois has produced interactive solutions for various businesses in food and beverage, hospitality, meetings, gaming and travel. Prior to joining Trumpet, he defined product models and management interactive processes as the product engineer for The Receivables Exchange, a capital market platform for business trading assets for working capital. He championed Internet initiatives at Wynn Las Vegas, Wynn Encore and Wynn Macau and managed a $2MM budget and produced over $44MM in gross revenue across hotel, entertainment, food and beverage, retail, golf and gaming divisions.
Robbie Vitrano
Robbie Vitrano is a co-founder and chairman of Trumpet, a venture marketing company that is a manifestation of the reinventing New Orleans. His point of view: New Orleans is the Social Innovation Silicon Valley, an urban microcosm of the economic, political, social, environmental and cultural issues being re-evaluated in the U.S. and around the world. As such, Trumpet has evolved its full-service brand communications disciplines to launch new ventures, incubating and developing them inside its 12,000 square foot renovated warehouse in the Creole district of the historic Faubourg St. John. Their work comprises advocacy, optimism and socially responsible capitalism.
Denise Gass
Reborn in New Orleans, Denise attended Tulane University, dabbled in cooking classes in Italy and Thailand, and then headed on to Texas, where she was a brand manager for major apparel companies. She led national PR, online, in-store, radio, tv, and print, along with Hispanic tv and print efforts. Despite the great Tex-Mex cuisine, this foodie missed New Orleans. She hurried back to New Orleans, to Trumpet, where she now applies her communication and management skills as Director of Social Media. She leverages her traditional marketing experience to educate clients on social influence marketing, develop brand strategies for engaging in consumer conversations, and manage tactical execution. In her spare time, she tweets about all things New Orleans, and maintains two food blogs.
