New Year’s celebrations are always bittersweet. Full of remembrances of the year just past and hope for the next, which is part of why we traditionally sing “Auld Lang Syne”, a song that celebrates endings and new beginnings.

This year it’s a little different here at IFMG, one of our bright spots is moving on. A little more bitter in with the sweet.

Rosa Luciano has been here since June 2010 as a contractor. She came in to help us out while one of our own was deployed with the Army in Iraq. During the past 18 months, she has worked diligently with me and the rest of the team on programs designed to push us into the modern world of social media and expand our interaction and reach.

The good news is that our employee is back safely from serving overseas. The bad news is that it means that we can’t keep Rosa.

You’re familiar with her work if you’re reading this blog, have visited our Carloanco blog, or are subscribed to any of our three Twitter feeds (CarloanCo, InteractiveFMG, Carloan). You’ve read her writing if you’ve subscribed to our Carloan.com dealer or consumer newsletters. If you’re following our Carloan Facebook presence for consumers, she launched and maintained that for us.

She’s had a strong influence on how we’ve entered these communication channels, and as her manager, I have nothing but praise for how she’s helped us in her time here.

We wish her all the best…and want to help her land her next role.

If you’re looking for someone in the Richmond area who has expertise in social media (blogging, Twitter, Facebook), websites, email marketing, marketing communications and a lot more, get in touch with her. Send her a message via Twitter using her handle, @RozaLuciano, or check out her LinkedIn profile.

And to show you her A game, she’s even got a mobile-compatible QR code for her LinkedIn Profile:

We’re really sad to see her go, but so excited to see what she does next!

Amy Taggart is the Marketing Manager for Interactive Financial Marketing Group

This past week we celebrated the holidays with a delicious lunch and an, always fun, game of White Elephant! The gifts ranged from awesome (movie tickets and gift cards) to “yea no one is going to take that away from you” (Christmas mugs and socks). All in all it was a great time and gave us all the opportunity to bond. Check out the pictures below!

The gift table. We all had our eye on one gift or another!

The food. Yummy!! We had an amazing assortment and it all was delicious!

Time to eat! You know food is delicious when NO ONE speaks during the meal

The IFMG team! Happy Holidays to you!!

Rosa Luciano is the Marketing Coordinator and blogger extraordinaire for Interactive Financial Marketing Group. Follow her on Twitter @RozaLuciano

So today the office is dressed up for Halloween and there are some interesting characters in the building! Check them out below!

Are you having any Halloween activities today? What do they include? Share them below and vote for your best costume!

Team IFMG!

Sales team: Mark, Nikki, Vieve, Brian, , and Chris!

Group photo.

IFMG Developers Bob and Brian.

Our finance team Dorothy, Zenaida and Scott!

Happy Halloween from us to you!

Rosa Luciano is the Marketing Coordinator and blogger extraordinaire for Interactive Financial Marketing Group. Follow her on Twitter @RozaLuciano

Most of you may not know, but National Boss Day  fell on October 16th, and since that happened to be on a Sunday, we decided to surprise our General Manager, Tom Feary, with a tribute to one of his favorite things. Swine. And what better way to show your boss appreciation on Boss Day than to order him his very own singing pig! It was quite comical as the below video and pictures will show! Check them out and share your own crazy surprises!

Rosa Luciano is the Marketing Coordinator and blogger extraordinaire for Interactive Financial Marketing Group. Follow her on Twitter @RozaLuciano

Yep. It’s true. We are all very different but work well together. Just a quick meet and greet of some of the members of our Marketing team here at IFMG (from my perspective anyways):

Albano aka ‘The Bano’ – SEO Analyst. This guy gets the job done. His willingness to learn new things and take on new projects is constant. You can catch him here late quite often coming up with ways to improve our online presence.

Caitlyn aka ‘The Perfectionist’ – Graphic Designer. A little shy at first Caitlyn is starting to come out of her shell! You can credit her for a lot of the awesome designs you may see in our marketing collateral, banner ads, and websites.

Rosa aka ‘The Feisty One’ – Marketing Coordinator. This chica needs her morning coffee before starting her day! Always looking for ways to improve social media and email best practices, you can find her Tweeting and interacting on Facebook most days.

Amy aka ‘Taggart.’ – Marketing Manager. Habitual ‘fuzzy bunny’ chaser, we can always count on Amy to bring in ideas and the numbers to back them up. Increasing brand awareness amongst our b2b clients is Amy’s specialty.

Ok so enough about the awesomeness that is the IFMG Marketing Team! Do you have awesome coworkers? Tell us about them!

Rosa Luciano is the Marketing Coordinator and blogger extraordinaire for Interactive Financial Marketing Group. Follow her on Twitter @RozaLuciano