The Agency That Put Reputation Back Into the Funnel

The most useful thing Trevelino/Keller ever sold may have been a very large vending machine. It did not hold crackers. It held cars. In 2012, the Atlanta agency was hired to introduce Carvana in its hometown. A year later came the first version of the glass automotive tower, a piece of retail theater so legible that a television viewer could understand the business before hearing the pitch. The assignment grew into an 11-year relationship, more than 20 vending-machine openings and national coverage that once sent enough people to Carvana's website to crash it.

This is a tidy origin story for the modern Trevelino/Keller. A memorable object earned attention. Media supplied authority. Social and content kept the story moving. The client grew, and the agency followed from one market into hundreds. No single channel gets to take the victory lap.

That last point has become the company's organizing argument. Trevelino/Keller is an independent, privately held agency founded in 2003 by Dean Trevelino and Genna Keller, colleagues from Shandwick and Ogilvy. It works with startups, middle-market companies, national brands and public organizations across technology, healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, transportation, franchising, food, lifestyle and the environment. Its public client list ranges from Nathan's Famous to SITA, Interface, Werner Enterprises, Invest Atlanta and UnitedHealthcare. What it sells is the coordination those very different clients tend to lack.

One brief, three departments

The firm divides the work into three capabilities. Public relations handles earned media, messaging, executive visibility, influencers, social channels and crisis response. Growth marketing covers paid search, account-based marketing, email, automation, SEO and lead capture. The creative studio handles identities, websites, graphics, packaging, motion and the supporting pieces that make campaigns recognizable. Clients can buy a launch, a relaunch or an accelerated-growth program rather than assemble a small parliament of specialist agencies.

They call the system 3Gen: DemandGen, ReputationGen and LeadGen, followed by sales enablement. The names are agency jargon; the sequencing is not. A prospect can see an ad without trusting the advertiser. A journalist's article can create trust without producing a lead. A lead can arrive while sales has nothing persuasive to send. Trevelino/Keller's product is meant to keep those handoffs from becoming trapdoors.

The first failure happens before the funnel

Here is the most transferable idea in the whole operation: marketing often fails before the campaign begins. The name is muddy. The website makes the visitor work. The category position sounds like everybody else's. Then a company purchases traffic and is surprised when strangers decline to perform interpretive labor.

Trevelino/Keller's growth practice says the funnel must be fed with the right brand assets before demand, reputation or lead generation can work properly. Its creative team offers naming, brand systems, web refreshes and campaign materials for precisely this reason. In one published example, the agency helped EMS Management Consultants absorb a series of acquisitions without throwing away recognizable colors or its name. The intervention was subtle: simplify the identity, clarify the message, and make the new structure readable.

That is also where the model differs from a classic PR retainer. Coverage is still valuable, but it is connected to search demand, CRM behavior and sales material. The agency publicly names tools such as Meltwater, Muck Rack, SEMrush, Sprout Social, Leadfeeder and HubSpot. Software does the counting and routing. People still decide what is worth saying.

The acquisition was a dress rehearsal in reverse

By 2024, the thesis had exposed a gap. Trevelino/Keller had spent heavily on growth marketing, but Marsden Marketing had spent 11 years becoming a B2B specialist in demand generation, digital advertising, account-based marketing and marketing technology. The two firms already knew each other. They had collaborated on shared clients, which meant the courtship came with something better than a pitch deck: evidence of how the teams behaved on an ordinary Tuesday.

Trevelino/Keller acquired Marsden that July. The price was not disclosed. The strategic cost is easier to see: integrating people, clients and systems while protecting the senior attention both shops had sold. Anne Marsden stayed on as a senior consultant; the agency gained a deeper growth team and eventually HubSpot Platinum partner status. Marsden's clients gained PR and creative services without another search process.

Those public marketplace figures are clues, not a rate card. Complex launch and growth programs are likely scoped around retainers or larger projects. A small company can plausibly begin with a defined assessment or creative assignment; it should not expect a national PR push, a new identity, a rebuilt website, paid acquisition and revenue operations for the minimum ticket.

A growth chart with a human footnote

In its latest O'Dwyer's profile, the agency reported 21.7% growth against 3.8% for the industry, ranking seventh among firms headquartered in the Southeast. It credited an “Authenticity+AI” approach and new products called tKAI, TK-AIU and Exec-AI. The offerings apply AI to market intelligence, workflows, brand development, campaigns, search visibility and executive discoverability. The sensible part of the pitch is the plus sign. Automation is treated as added capacity, while earned authority still has to come from people and institutions worth believing.

The human footnote is retention. Agency work is famous for churning through young talent, yet Trevelino/Keller has made long tenure part of its market claim. Its 60/40 hybrid model is calculated by the month, not necessarily by a rigid weekly schedule. Wild Blue Yonder sends staff on curated travel. Niners marks a nine-year anniversary with another trip. In 2024, PRWeek named it among its Best Places to Work. The culture proposition is practical: experienced people remember why last year's decision was made, and clients do not have to re-teach the account every season.

A practical brief for borrowing the idea

The conditions matter. Integration works when one leader owns the commercial outcome, teams share data, sales follows up, and the company can tolerate enough time for reputation to compound. It is a poor fit for a buyer seeking a single cheap tactic, a company unwilling to expose its CRM, or a launch whose product and positioning are still changing every week. Crisis communications also obeys a harsher clock than long-term demand generation; no elegant funnel diagram substitutes for fast judgment.

Trevelino/Keller's place in the market is now clear. It is larger in scope than a PR boutique, smaller and more senior-led than a global network, and more reputation-minded than a pure performance shop. The risk is the same one faced by every integrated agency: breadth can turn into a long menu. Its answer is to sell three business moments - build the brand, go to market, accelerate growth - and let the desired outcome choose the tools.

The car vending machine remains a useful test. It was creative enough to explain itself, strange enough to earn coverage and concrete enough to be photographed in every new city. But the object alone was not the strategy. Someone still had to connect the spectacle to a company people would trust with a large online purchase. That narrow space between being noticed and being believed is where Trevelino/Keller has built its business.

Keep following the signal

Company figures and rankings are the latest publicly available as of September 24, 2026. Pricing shown above comes from a third-party agency marketplace and may not reflect a custom proposal.