Three University alumni have graduated from the Louisiana Business and Technology Center and moved their advertising agency, Red Six Media, to an office in downtown Baton Rouge at the beginning of the month.
Matt Dardenne, Kristen Morrison and Joe Martin, Manship School of Mass Communication alumni from the class of 2009, spent three and a half years growing their business at the Innovation Park located on the University’s South Campus.
Red Six Media specializes in “video production, graphic design [and] all the traditional and non-traditional media production,” Dardenne said.
The company has handled many notable clients in the past and continues to do so.
“We’re handling Dow Chemical’s advertising campaign in Louisiana this year,” Dardenne said. “We did John Delgado’s campaign for Metro Council last year — we managed the campaign, we produced all of his media.”
While most clients are local, the company serves some people from all over the country, Morrison said in an email.
“Our client base spans from Louisiana to California, from nonprofits to the oil and gas industry, and from targeting college students to retirees,” she said.
The LBTC staff helped Red Six Media get to where they are today, Dardenne said.
“[The LBTC] was crucial,” he said. “We knew we had our skills … but we had no experience in running a business. The economy wasn’t in very good shape at that point. So they were instrumental in getting us off the ground and giving us the business advice that we really needed.”
LBTC Executive Director Charles D’Agostino said Red Six Media was able to gather clients located within the LBTC business incubator.
“One of the great things is that we were able to funnel a lot of business to them,” he said. “They ended up basically designing the logos and brochures for 15 to 20 companies in the incubator. So they were able to meet these people, see what their needs were and give them a very good price on designing their marketing materials.”
The LBTC assisted Red Six Media from accounting issues to legal issues and were always there for advice or guidance, Morrison said.
“We could always knock on their door when we faced a business hurdle, internal or external,” she said. “If they couldn’t answer our questions, they connected us to professionals that could.”
D’Agostino noted that his experience in helping Red Six Media gave him and Jennifer Fowler, director of the student incubator at the LBTC, a business idea for what is now a highly successful venture.
“They basically gave me the idea of the student incubator because they came to me a couple weeks before graduation and none of them had a job,” he said. “They had this idea of this company that they worked together on a student project.”
The trio at Red Six Media said they were all grateful for the help they received from the LBTC, and the future of their company looks bright.
The new office “represents a new area of growth” and a “huge step forward for our company,” Martin said.
“It’s exciting — we love this new office space,” Dardenne said. “It’s in the middle of downtown, we love being here. We’re hoping that is going to give our company more visibility, which will in turn help us get new
business in the future.”
“[The LBTC] was crucial. We knew we had our skills… but we had no experience in running a business. The economy wasn’t in very good shape at that point. So they were instrumental in getting us off the ground and giving us the business advice that we really needed.”
