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Thank you to the men and women who serve and have served in the United States Armed Forces.  We proudly know you as our spouses, parents, grandparents, siblings, family, friends and colleagues. We are grateful for your service and honor you, along with all veterans, on this Veterans Day 2011.

Please visit our tribute to veterans on Rosetta Currents.

Beaches accumulate lots of trash and debris that are harmful to marine life and a health hazard to humans.  We donned our gloves and buckets and spent the morning picking up all the yucky stuff that gets deposited on our local beach.   Along with my fellow LEVELers, volunteers totaled 62,963 strong throughout California and we were able to make an immediate difference on our environment by working together to clean up California’s beautiful coastline.

Of course there are always interesting things to discover amidst the trash: the winner of the most unusual item contest for 2011 was a volunteer in Sonoma County who found a photo strip of a couple with the man’s face scratched out.  While I did not find anything even remotely that unusual I did find some glow sticks (sad face, VERY bad for the environment), broken glass, bottle caps, and balloons.

One thing is for sure, LEVEL and I will be back at the beach NEXT year, on the third Saturday in September, doing our part to make the world a cleaner, safer place.

Check out more pictures from the day on Flickr.

With significant innovation in mobile experience design happening at rapid rates we are reaching the point I like to call “Stage 2 Mobile”, where companies who rushed to “be mobile” are putting on the brakes to refocus on long-term strategy, scalability and mobile brand guidelines.

At the same time, brands that still haven’t acted in the mobile space are falling further behind and are watching from the sidelines as their contemporaries engage customers across devices in the way they want to consume content today.

For those companies who haven’t gotten into the game, and for those who are refining their practice, we will address how to move your brand forward in mobile, at whatever stage you are in.

Jason Gurley, Creative Director at LEVEL, a Rosetta company, who leads our Adaptive Design practice, will join me in hosting a webinar that will talk about how to develop and evolve your mobile strategy. As part of the discussion, we will talk about the importance of building optimal design and UX standards across smartphone and tablet experiences.

Whether you are far along in your mobile strategy or are just starting out, this webinar is for all marketers. Join us on October 26 from 11 A.M. – 12 P.M. PST. Feel free to comment below with your questions in advance – we’d look forward to hearing from you.

Register for ‘Three Ways to Improve Your Brand Experience on Smartphones and Tablets’ October 26, 11 A.M. -12 P.M. PST

As I said in my first post , this wasn’t my first internship: I actually held 2 internships before, and many other volunteer and part-time jobs. However, this internship at LEVEL has been the most educational and rewarding out of all my other positions.

Not only was I able to work in a digital marketing agency that serves clients such as Apple, OfficeMax and Facebook, but LEVEL actually gave me real responsibilities. As I’ve said, my internship centered on how new Client Services employees learn their job responsibilities, and ultimately how these folks view LEVEL as a whole. Even though some days were a bit nerve-racking, LEVEL believed in my capabilities and my work was important to them.

My internship allowed my supervisors to see if I could hack it as a “real” employee, but it also allowed me to test out how it would be to work at LEVEL (PS, it’s awesome). Internships are crucial – they allow undergrads to gain real experience. I definitely recommend the intern route – it really paid off for me. My best tips for those looking for internships:

• Connections: meet with as many people in the company as you can. Go to job fairs, make friends on LinkedIn, etc.
• Persistence: make the effort to follow up and let them know you’re interested.
• Hard-work: If you do get in, you have prove yourself. Internships aren’t about high pay and glamour, rather they’re an opportunity to show how you can perform in a professional setting. So make the most of it!

Now that I’m full-time, I’m excited to learn my new duties and see what else I can do.

Here are key takeaways from Tuesday’s event:

Mobile + Social: Conversation, connection, and sharing via mobile are key for brands to resonate with the consumer. With 73% of adults with mobile devices using SMS features and nearly 40% of social media users accessing social media content from their mobile phone, marketers are now actively searching for ways to combine these two powerful technologies. To make the biggest impact within your organization, LEVEL and Mikey Lee, Director of Marketing at Aurasma, share the fundamental understanding that “mobile is a horizontal discipline; it should be integrated in all aspects of the marketing mix and not a siloed vertical.” Mobile and social solutions have the potential to build a stronger relationship with the customer if executed together, but they are even more powerful when integrated with all brand touch points in mind.

Mobile and social technologies that enable the bridge between the physical and digital spaces will continue to evolve. Innovative technologies, such as location-based services (LBS), augmented reality, and Near Field Communication (NFC) that enable users to exchange payment wirelessly, are leading the way in bridging online and offline experiences. For instance, NFC technology has not yet been widely adopted, but is predicted to rise by 2013. RIM has recently decided to integrate NFC technology into their handsets and their first BlackBerry NFC phones are planned to arrive later this month. What does this mean? Marketers will be thinking about point of sale (POS) in a completely new capacity – and mobile devices will be key to driving incremental revenue.

The role of the marketer is to deliver a seamless, cross-channel experience that adds value at each customer touch point. Mobile devices encourage consumers to continuously converse, connect, and share content, but the true value for a brand is not how many fans it has but rather their level of engagement. Engagement is a currency that consumers are willing to spend with a brand in exchange for something of value in return. According to Lee, “the three ways to make money on the web are: eCommerce, opt in subscriptions, and ads.” Marketers must find an intuitive experience that balances this revenue driving agenda with that of customers’ agendas. Brands must put themselves in the shoes of their continually evolving consumers to be in the conversation, across innovative technologies, and accessible seamlessly anytime, anywhere.

During all the SMW panels, there were large screens set up behind the speakers that dynamically posted real-time tweets to the #SMWLA event hashtag, which encouraged me to contribute my thoughts and connect with other followers. In fact, after the panel I sought out those attendees to carry on the conversation in person. I effortlessly conversed, connected and shared seamlessly across multiple platforms around one brand. This experience demonstrated the power that mobile + social bring to the table – a true immersive brand experience!

– Janice Reinold, Mobile Marketing Coordinator, LEVEL LA
Twitter: @ChasingHiromi

Join me at the upcoming LEVEL+Liferay Roadshows to see how these frameworks can be used to consolidate content management and application integration strategies, improve sustainability, and provide a comprehensive platform for driving a personalized digital experiences across devices.

Day One Speakers at LEVEL Cuban Night (Tom Adamski, BJ Fogg, Ellen McGirt, Tina Tuli, Michael Pachter)

We wrapped up a fantastic Interplay 2011. If you haven’t already checked out highlights from Day One, you can read them at Interplay 2011 | Simple, Social, Fun. Here are some of the highlights from Day Two:

Cigars and steel drums

Day Two of Interplay 2011 kicked off with a visual montage of the previous day’s sessions and evening celebration –  welcoming everyone (slowly!) back into the ballroom after a night of mojitos, steel drums and s’mores by the campfire. The annual Interplay party is an anticipated tradition, where conversations from the day continue, new friendships form and business opportunities take shape. It was a lively time and a perfect set-up for our final day.

Chris Kuenne, Rosetta, Interplay 2011

Rosetta + LEVEL case studies

We were thrilled to welcome Rosetta CEO Chris Kuenne to keynote Day Two, where he shared early stories about the Rosetta | LEVEL partnership and the unique advantages the merged agency brings to clients. Chris took us inside the Rosetta | LEVEL organization to describe how a modern digital agency looks at a time of swift technology change. “There’s a new level of analytic rigor required of marketers, and the growth of new technologies and explosion of data is fundamentally changing our field,” he said. With the tremendous amount of data flying fast at all of us, successful marketers must have the tools in place to make sense of it and apply it. Examples of campaigns for OfficeMax, Nationwide and Allergan showed how customer-centric – and technology-driven work can elevate the brand (and stock price), when executed flawlessly.

Forrester’s Adaptive Marketer Framework

Vice President and Practice Leader of CMO & Marketing Leadership at Forrester, David Cooperstein, echoed the idea that deep customer insights and analytics are requirements for digital marketing success today. In his presentation he challenged marketers to either become adaptive in their techniques or follow the dinosaur into extinction. Adaptive marketing is the ability to be flexible, take risks, respond quickly, and stay in touch with customers at every step. One important way to do this is to get out of your comfort zone and push campaigns that don’t follow the traditional path.

David outlined some of the top brand campaigns riding this adaptive approach to great success, such as the Dominos Pizza brand reinvention, San Francisco Giants dynamic ticket pricing system, and the Verizon B2B sales strategy with more direct customer interaction. “Adaptive marketers are successfully navigating the digital marketing process,” he said. They’re heeding the advice of Jack Welch: Change before you have to.

The “Do’s and Don’ts” of Building a Mobile Organization

One of the most substantial changes facing marketers over the past few years is the little screen we have in our hands, our pockets or just within reach nearly every minute of the day. LEVEL VP of Mobile Daniel Blackburn closed Interplay 2011 with a look inside the mobile-centric marketing organization, a requirement for an effective mobile marketing practice today. This mobile “Center of Excellence” houses stored knowledge and standard processes at a time when the mobile industry is changing so quickly that best practices and execution are king. Daniel stressed the importance getting products and campaigns to market quickly, analyzing results, iterating often, refining, and relaunching, as the key to succeeding in mobile. “You need to treat marketing like a day trader,” he said.

It was a fast couple of days on California’s Central Coast and great to connect with clients, partners, colleagues and the incredible thought-leaders at the podium. Tom Adamski left us with a closing reminder that our theme for Interplay 2011 was Transform with a Purpose. “There’s a reason for the business we’re all in, let’s not forget it, he said.” We have a lot to think about after Interplay 2011, and we certainly won’t forget it.

Be on the lookout for videos from each of the sessions on http://interplay2011.com as well as our photos from the event.

Tom Adamski, Interplay 2011

Daniel Blackburn, Interplay 2011

David Cooperstein, Interplay 2011

Simple, Social, Fun

Those words were an important theme that resonated throughout Day One of annual client summit, Interplay 2011. BJ Fogg, Director of Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab, led the day with a provoking keynote presentation on the “power of persuasion,” a discussion of the causes and motivators for changing consumer behavior. With beach balls, ukulele in hand, and a rousing discussion about dental floss, Fogg presented a compelling case for how marketers need to focus on simple behavior changes for maximum results.

Content was a major conversation topic throughout the day with comments by Michael Pachter from Wedbush Securities looking at the role of content in the entertainment and gaming channels with interesting observations on Nintendo, Zynga and Apple across platforms and devices. Pachter highlighted the challenges and opportunities for marketers working to reach consumers – and change behavior – via those channels.

“Content is king, queen and bishop combined,” said Tina Tuli, Director of Media and Digital Marketing in Latin America for RIM. This compelling follow-up statement described the emergence of a digital middle class that is driving the explosion of mobile adoption in Latin America (LATAM). Customizing campaigns and recognizing the nuances of each region is critical for brands to achieve the level of success RIM is seeing in the region today. It also requires risk-taking to experiment with new ideas for content and social interaction, which given RIM’s mobile leadership in LATAM is certainly paying off. Tuli’s call to action: Marketers must have a digital strategy in Latin America with compelling content delivered directly to the devices consumers own more than any other.

Rounding out Day One was a moving presentation by Ellen McGirt, Senior Writer for Fast Company, who shared insights from her work covering and working with many of the innovators and “philosophers of the modern age,” including Mark Zuckerberg, Trey Pennington and Matt Damon. She delivered a powerful message, directing us to think about the impact of marketing campaigns, relationships, and business objectives on a higher purpose. McGirt and LEVEL CEO Tom Adamski ended the day discussing the topic of doing business with purpose and the role of philanthropy as a social imperative. McGirt left us all thinking big.

An energetic and inspiring Day One and a big thank-you to all of our esteemed and entertaining speakers. You can visit http://interplay2011.com for more information on the event, speakers and follow-up insights from the event.

Bj Fogg, Interplay 2011 ©mikelarsoninc

Ellen McGirt and Tom Adamski, Interplay 2011

Michael Pachter, Research Analyst with Wedbush Securities, is the go-to analyst for many game and content studios as well as a global voice on the opportunities and challenges for businesses in the entertainment industry. He will unveil some of the specific ways marketers can adapt their strategies to appeal to consumers who are interacting with entertainment content more than ever and in more places than ever possible.

Michael is one of those rare breeds of lawyer, MBA, financial guru, marketer, visionary and gamer, and he hosts the fantastic Pach-Attack podcast on iTunes and GameTrailers.com where he talks about the business of gaming (it’s great, subscribe!).

Learn more about Michael’s session “Putting Customers at the Wheel – How Consumers are Driving Marketing Innovation” and the rest of this year’s Interplay event lineup by downloading the Interplay 2011 app for iPhone, Android and Blackberry.