While attending the University of Miami in the 2000s and spending many years as a professional DJ, Jonathan “Rico” Arroyo fell in love with Miami’s vibrant nightlife and event scene. During those early years, Rico honed a wide range of creative skills to build and promote his personal brand — skills that would later become the foundation of his business.

As he worked with various nightclubs, hotels, and restaurants, Rico began to notice recurring challenges between creatives and management. There was a noticeable lack of consistency in the quality of content being produced, paired with frequent communication gaps between designers, photographers, social media managers, and venue management. Driven by his entrepreneurial spirit, Rico recognized an opportunity to bridge that gap. Drawing on his experience, education, and extensive network, he began assembling and managing A team of elite creatives to deliver cohesive, high-quality branding and content. What started as marketing and creative direction for individual venues soon evolved into a full-scale agency serving a diverse range of clients.

When trying to decide on the name for this agency, the term Avant Garde—meaning “the advance group in any field, especially the visual and musical arts, whose methods are unorthodox yet innovative”— perfectly captured the vision and energy of the team Rico built. And so, Avant Garde Media was born.

Over the past 15+ years, Avant Garde Media has traveled the globe — visiting destinations such as India, Dubai, Russia, South Korea, Italy, France, Germany, London, New York, Chicago, and Las Vegas—and has collaborated with some of the world’s most iconic brands, including BMW, Pepsi, ESPN, Capital One, Ferrari, Bacardi, Heineken, Mastercard, Ray-Ban, Discover and Kellogg’s, among many others.

The team has also contributed to some of the biggest events in the world, such as Bad Bunny’s X100PRE Tour, Coachella, the GRAMMYs, the Super Bowl, Formula 1 Miami & Las Vegas Grand Prix, NBA All-Star Weekend, the Men’s Final Four, the College Football Playoff National Championship, the Tribeca Film Festival, and the Burton U.S. Open Snowboarding Championships, to name a few.
Today, Avant Garde Media continues to do what we love — pushing creative boundaries, elevating brands, and setting new standards for quality and turnaround time in every project we take on.