Rokkan

Rokkan announces the completely re-designed JetBlue.com and new iPhone app!

SNAPSHOT

 The new JetBlue.com includes:

• A new visual navigation to make the site experience more intuitive
• Ability to track your upcoming flights without ever leaving the home page
• Prominent TrueBlue sign-in module, encouraging users to sign in for maximum benefits (flight status, relevant fare deals based on your location and search history, etc.)
• Improved flight booking widget

The new JetBlue iPhone app features:

• The app was designed with a beautiful, clean look, consistent with the new .com, but (of course) optimized for mobile. With help from Double Encore, the app was created with rich, smooth design&emdash;truly leveraging the native iOS capability.
• Travel Modes: The JetBlue app tracks your upcoming flight, and knows where you are in your travel cycle. This functionality allows users to easily book, check in, share flight info, see flight status, gate and terminal info, baggage claim information, etc. 
• Pick Me Up:  Send real-time flight information to the person who is picking you up at your destination. This allows the recipient to see useful information such as the flight status, local airport information, traffic and routes to the airport, etc.
• Fun Features: Give your friends travel envy by creating a custom JetBlue photo postcard, shareable via email, Facebook, and Twitter.
• Destination Guide: Once you've booked your flight, the app displays weather, airport info, and tips on what to do in your destination city.

Read more over at JetBlue.

In 2000, John Noe and Chung Ng were fresh out of college when they met at a large Web design company providing digital business solutions for financial clients like Chase and Merrill Lynch. Neither felt creatively challenged. They didn't like the corporate environment.

“We thought it would be awesome and fun to start our own business, but we had no idea what running a business really meant,” said Mr. Noe.

So the two men, along with colleague Charles Bae, founded Rokkan in September 2000. They had no clients when they began working from Noe's living room, with him as CEO, Mr. Ng as executive user experience director and Charles Bae as executive creative director.

They named their company Rokkan—a Japanese word meaning “intuition.”

At first, the team put their creative aspirations aside and worked on securing financing and big, corporate accounts. “We needed to get established, and this is what we knew,” said Noe.

Quickly, they built up a reputation, and though their client list is a who's-who of corporate America 12 years later, they are known for unconventional thinking.

In 2004 Rokkan helped change the way consumers interact with airline sites with its campaign for Virgin America. “We made it possible to see what seats were available before you booked a flight,” said Noe. “No other airline was doing that at the time. Now everyone does.”

To date, the agency has won more than 90 media and tech awards, including being named an Agency to Watch in 2012 in Advertising Age's Agency A-List. Rokkan is now houses 50+ employees with $8 million in annual sales from a client list that includes Jet Blue, Virgin America, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Nintendo, EA Games, Stoli Vodka and Google.

“We have built a client list by being the agency that doesn't give you the thing that you've been doing,” said Noe. “We work from our gut, and we look for clients who have the stomach to get outside their comfort zones.”

Even now, Noe is not shy about his distaste for corporate culture. He fled that environment early-on, and in building Rokkan, he's intentionally kept it small and hip. The office is a T-shirt environment, and ping-pong tournaments are at the heart of Rokkan's social culture.

HITS

Back in the early days, it was hard for a digital agency to land big accounts, so instead of chasing clients, the boys from Rokkan teamed up with larger, more traditional agencies that were looking for cyber savvy. “It was easier to partner with an established agency than to land a brand,” Noe said. It was a partnership with Anomaly that led to the award-winning Virgin America campaign. Rokkan partnered with the agency for 18 months, charging a flat fee for its hours. Then, in a twist of fate that Noe swore resulted in “no bad blood,” Virgin America management severed its ties with Anomaly and hired Rokkan directly.

Today, Rokkan now has the chops to land the big brands on its own.

MISSES

In early 2009, soon after the economy tanked, Rokkan took on a client that sold luggage, school bags, and backpacks was a cool brand that wanted an eCommerce site. But somewhere along the way, there was a chasm in communication. Rokkan charged a lower-than-unusual fee to do “initial-phase work,” but the client, Mr. Noe said, thought the fee should cover everything on its wish list. Unable to work like that, Mr. Noe said, Rokkan exited the relationship. But its team learned a valuable lesson. “Now,” he said, “we break the work down into smaller pieces with a road map. And we are smarter about looking for more compatible relationships.”

Read more over at Crain's New York.

Rokkan is excited to announce the hiring of Zach Newcomb (@znewcomb) as Executive Account Director.

“Finding a talented and innovative executive that fits into our overall culture is a rare commodity,” said John Noe, CEO of Rokkan. “We are thrilled to welcome Zach into the Rokkan family. He has a deep history working with some of the nation’s most respected blue-chip brands like American Express and Nike, and is a perfect fit into our vision for where we see Rokkan going into 2012.” 

Bringing a unique blend of both agency and brand experience with him, Newcomb will be tasked with cementing client service practices at Rokkan, as well as forging deep relationships with brands that leverage the agency’s unique creative and technical assets to help clients meet their strategic marketing goals.  In addition, Newcomb will help oversee new business initiatives to drive Rokkan’s rapidly expanding client portfolio which includes Stoli Vodka, JetBlue, Scholastic, Chipotle Mexican Grill, and EA Games.

Read more at Adweek.

John Noe, Rokkan's CEO, discusses the relationship between brands' websites and Facebook pages.

As seen in DMNews.com

Q: Given capabilities such as site retargeting and landing page optimization, brands' sites seem to be now as much direct marketing vehicles as they are brand advertising vehicles. Would 
you agree?

A: I think that's 100% right. I think a lot of it goes down to segmentation and all the different use cases. If you're thinking about travel sites, [it's] being very thoughtful of how a traveler who lives in Florida might be looking for a very different kind of travel than a person who lives in New York. We find a lot of interesting things. For example, for people who are customers of a particular brand, the audience on 
Facebook is sometimes different than the audience on Twitter versus the audience on the dot-com.

Q: Many TV ad calls-to-action drive consumers to a brand's Facebook page instead of its own site. Is there a danger there? 

A: It depends on the company. There are companies that are pure-play e-commerce, so they're going to want to drive people to their e-commerce site. I'd be surprised if eBay started pitching its Facebook page more than eBay.com. But there are also the brands that don't sell directly. We work with a lot of liquor brands and they can't sell on their sites. Then it becomes more about how are we building awareness of this particular brand or its products and how do we start bringing them into a channel where it can have some of those looser, more informal conversations about the brand? 

Q: Does driving consumers to 
a Facebook page impact the 
value of a non-e-commerce 
marketer's own site?

A: I think it does change the dynamics quite a bit. I think some of the trick is taking in what the different purposes are between how we're using social channels versus our branded dot-com channels. A lot of what we found is that especially with brands that are lifestyle brands, it's very important to be able to deliver on what the lifestyle of that particular brand is — and sometimes what's more effective than a really nice piece of copy or visual is 
the conversations that 
are happening.

Q: There's a push toward brands integrating social into their dot-com presence. How much of a challenge is that?

A: It is new, and I honestly can't think of anyone who's doing it perfectly. I think the brands that are most hungry to figure this out are the ones that are the e-commerce players. How do we make shopping more social online? Shopping offline is a very social experience, but on the sites it tends to be very singular. So we've been looking at how to weave social into the shopping experience, so that it can either aid an individual's shopping or it becomes a group effort.

Innovative Digital Agency Tapped to Spearhead the Airline’s E-Commerce and Mobile Design

(New York, NY) August 31, 2011 – Rokkan, a full-service digital agency recognized for successfully building businesses through integrated digital solutions, announced today their selection as the lead digital agency for JetBlue (Nasdaq: JBLU), an innovative leader in the travel space recognized for its dedicated and forward-thinking approach to customer service and the in-flight experience as well as their digital and social media presence. Rokkan will lead a wide array of digital initiatives across e-commerce, mobile and social integration channels. Rokkan will also work closely with Mullen, the creative and media agency-of-record for JetBlue which handles both offline and online advertising for the brand.

“We’re thrilled to be a part of JetBlue’s story as they continue to grow and evolve as a leader in the space,” stated John Noe, CEO of Rokkan. “JetBlue is one of the most approachable and innovative brands in the world. We look forward to helping them showcase everything they do while bringing a fresh perspective on how travelers can interact with the brand through digital.”

“Rokkan brings the same level of passion and dedication for innovation to digital solutions that JetBlue embodies for reinventing the travel experience,” said Michael Stromer, director of e-commerce and interactive marketing for JetBlue.  “The agency’s success with a strong portfolio of consumer brands like Atlantis, Chipotle and Google speaks to their ability to create unique and meaningful campaigns that truly engage the customer.  As New York’s Hometown Airline, the Rokkan team – also based in New York – is a perfect extension of our digital brand “                                               

About Rokkan
Rokkan is a full service digital agency re-inventing the way brands engage with their consumers and fans. Committed to offering brands unique and fresh perspective, Rokkan has delivered countless award winning online business solutions, marketing campaigns and social engagements for some of the largest and most beloved brands in the world. Award-winning examples include launching and revamping e-commerce sites for Virgin America, Atlantis and Nintendo to significantly grow online revenue; delivering large scale national and global campaigns for Stoli Vodka, Google, Chipotle and 2K Games; and launching the largest fully social media integrated cross country race for Ford with the producers of the Amazing Race. Founded in 2000, Rokkan's expertise, repeated success and pace of growth, continues to distinguish it as one of the leading digital agencies to watch out for. Please visit: www.Rokkan.com for more information.

About JetBlue Airways
JetBlue is New York's Hometown Airline(TM) with other focus cities in Boston, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, and Orlando. Known for its award-winning service and free TV as much as their low fares, JetBlue offers the most legroom in coach of any U.S. airline as well as super-spaciousEven More Space seats. JetBlue is also America's first and only airline to offer its own Customer Bill of Rights, with meaningful and specific compensation for customers inconvenienced by service disruptions within JetBlue's control. Visit www.jetblue.com/promise  for details. JetBlue serves 66 cities with 700 daily flights and later this year plans to introduce service to St. Croix and St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands as well as La Romana, Dominican Republic and Liberia, Costa Rica, subject to government approval. With JetBlue, all seats are assigned, all fares are one-way, and an overnight stay is never required. For information or reservations call 1-800-JET-BLUE (1-800-538-2583), TTY/TDD 1-800-336-5530, or visit www.jetblue.com.

As seen in MediaPost.com

With an eye on social initiatives, digital shop Rokkan Thursday named Sav Banerjee as its new executive strategy director.

At New York-based Rokkan, Banerjee will oversee the strategy team and its work on everything from social media infrastructure to promotional efforts for such clients as Stoli Vodka, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Google, THQ and 2K Games.

"Social media is such an increasingly important part of modern business and we wanted to make sure we had the best resources available for our clients' needs," John Noe, CEO of Rokkan, said in reference to Banerjee.

Noe is also counting on Banerjee to create consumer engagement models with healthy interaction -- particularly in the areas of content creation and distribution, video 2.0, and influencer marketing.

Previously, Banerjee honed his digital and social media expertise at Big Fuel Communications, M80, and most recently at SapientNitro.

Banerjee has recently championed projects like Google's "demoslam" social media promotion, and Smart Water's Jennifer Aniston "Sex Tape" viral video.

Founded in 2000, Rokkan is perhaps best known for its work launching and revamping e-commerce sites for Virgin America, Atlantis and Nintendo.

It also gained notoriety for its work on a social media-supported cross-country race for Ford with the producers of the Amazing Race.

Just this past April, Chipotle tapped Rokkan to handle some upcoming digital marketing and brand awareness initiatives. Specifically, Rokkan said it would help to develop online sales, customer service infrastructure, local store marketing strategy and out-of-store ordering through mobile and Web platforms.

Heather comes to Rokkan with over 15 years of information architecture experience and a love of creating clean, clear and usable digital experiences. She comes from DailyCandy.com where she focused on the intersection of content, commerce and social media.  Her agency experience includes Senior IA roles at Frog design, Proxicom and iXL. Heather's experience with past clients include MarthaStewart.com, Scholastic.com, GE.com, NYTimes.com, and JPMorganChase. Heather will help lead the UX team at Rokkan.

We managed to get a hold of this TMZ cut of the paparazzi giving poor Jen a hard time. Thankfully, Ms. Aniston found shelter from the chaos in Rokkan’s former office building on Lafayette. Check out our Senior Creative Technologist, Andy Prondak’s moment in the limelight on frame 01:26!

Thanks for the press everybody, but you heard the man -”the sidewalks have a right to be cleared.”

We had an opportunity to get our game on with the New York City Social Sports Club’s Kickball leaguelast week in the LES. Needless to say, we should definitely stick to building awesome websites as we got spanked left and right on the court (field? idk kickball terminology). Even though some of us were n00bs to the game, in true ROKKAN fashion we muscled through it and had a lot of fun to say the least. Jon, a producer here at ROKKAN and native of Bermuda (srsly) even traded in his flip flops for a fresh pair of kicks to help us out. Thanks Jon!

The NYCSSC Kickball league starts its Summer registration in July, open to teams of 14-18 people, 4 of whom must be ladies. If you are interested in cheering on Team ROKKAN at the next game, come see us at 7pm on July 16th at this location, and if you don’t find us there, see you at Aces & Eights for Post Game Bar Specials!