For Coldwell Banker's Generation Blue Experience annual sales conference that kicks off in New Orleans on Feb. 29th, the company's marketing team is featuring the next generation of millennials who are driving innovation: a group of young agents who are pioneering collaboration via digital and social media. They're featured in a main-stage panel at the #genblue confab — and in a slick video befitting their age, locale and — we'll go ahead and say it — good looks.

The dozen or so social-savvy agents, who are based in Miami's South Beach area, "are changing the way agents traditionally approach their business. They are collaborating with each other to help promote each other's listings and learn from one another. Led by their manager, Nancy Corey, the New Wave Group personifies the core qualities of what it means to be part of Gen Blue."

A blog post elaborates:Continue reading...

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRD), the educational arm of the nation's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, has honored 337 major U.S. companies in its 2012 list of the 'Best Places to Work for LGBT Equality."

"We're honored to recognize a record number of employers this year who have taken the steps to treat their LGBT employees like the valuable assets they are," said HRC President Joe Solmonese in a release.

"These companies have shown a commitment to their employees through fair hiring and employment practices and recognize that equal treatment of LGBT employees is not only the right thing to do, but also a good business practice."Continue reading...

Brands concerned with internal brand engagement would do well to heed what's going on at Whole Foods right now.

The upmarket grocer is lambasted as is more of a “faux hippy Wal-Mart than an 'earth-and-body-friendly organic foods paradise” by a disgruntled employee of five years in a 2,343-word resignation letter to former bosses in Toronto, where there is one Whole Foods Market location, in the tony Hazelton Lanes retail complex in Yorkville.Continue reading...

Wal-Mart's latest advertising campaign is promoting its employees with not only standalone spots, but individual microsites. For example, Nicholas Qualman, a divisional learning and development manager, is featured in the spot above and via a vanity URLed microsite, WalmartNicholas.com. The marketing initiative promotes Wal-Mart's Community Action Network, which the brand also promotes on Twitter, Facebook, its YouTube channel and on its LinkedIn profile.

How's this for internal brand engagement? Inspired by a staff-created rendering of Google's logo at its London office, all Google offices were challenged to come up with "Googley" localized logo installations. The prize: dinner and a donation to the charity of their choice. Check out the entries in the video above and here.