Rokkan

Our own Executive Account Director, Zach Newcomb, talks on CNN's Early Start about the best Super Bowl XLVI commercials. Which one was your favorite?

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.

We sat down with our own Charles Bae, ECD and Partner, for a quick Q & A about the new JetBlue look.

R: Which five words would you use to describe the new JetBlue.com and JetBlue iPhone app design?

C: Loveable, simple, smart, refreshing, and inviting.

R:What's the inspiration behind the new look?
C:The new look was inspired by what else, JetBlue! After reviewing the history of their .com, we did sort of a reset and literally went back to basics. We purposefully kept the design simple, using core brand elements and very little embellishment, to make sure the brand would shine through. JetBlue's tail fins inspired us to keep things simple and fun...a quality of the brand customers know and love.

R: How does this new design contribute to the overall customer experience?
C: That flying is fun! Every aspect of the JetBlue experience is about how to make things easier and more enjoyable for the customer, whether it's booking a ticket online, checking-in on your phone, or enjoying unlimited snacks in-flight. It's truly about the customer.

Pre- and post-flight booking has become even easier and more intuitive to manage with the .com and mobile integration. Self-service was an important aspect of the new redesign, and even on the JetBlue homepage, you'll see there is a greater emphasis on customer needs, rather than on other information. Where else can you check your flight status without having to click a single button? Once you're logged into TrueBlue, the homepage will display most of what you need to know about your upcoming flight without any clicks.

Now that's loveable.

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.

Rokkan is pleased to announce that we made Ad Age's A-List as one of the Top Ten Agencies to Watch in 2012. We're honored to be in such distinguished company. Thanks to everyone who has been with us in the long and short who helped us get here.

We couldn't be more excited about where 2012 is heading. Rokkan's client roster continues to expand, and we've had the opportunity to work with brands we never thought possible even just a few years ago. With our explosive growth, and the exciting new stuff we'll be launching soon, this recognition will hopefully be just the beginning of where Rokkan is headed.

Read more over at Ad Age.

Ford is teaming up once more with Emmy-award-winning reality producers to create the ultimate interactive reality Web series: Escape Routes.

TDI, Rokkan, and Profiles embark on the second season of last year's Ford Focus Rally, where viewers at home were able to follow and affect the outcome of six teams as they traveled across the country competing in extreme, real-life challenges. Escape Routes, due to launch later this year, will feature the 2013 Ford Escape and a completely re-imagined level of social interaction, gaming, live streaming video, and more.

We’re currently looking for an elite crop of drivers—teams of two with a strong presence on the Web and a hunger for adventure—to take the wheel of the all-new Ford Escape. Besides an epic experience and a spot in the limelight, you’ll be competing for cash and prizes for the friends, fans and followers that help you on your way to the finish line.

Think you’re up for the challenge? Apply for your spot and learn more at www.escaperoutes.com.

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.