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Green Buzz Agency interviewed Dana Hagenbuch of Commongood Careers, an innovative organization that helps non-profits find the talent they need.

Dana is the Director of Marketing and Communications

What is marketing like not just in the careers field, but in the non-profit careers field?
I’ve always equated the nonprofit market with start-up or entrepreneurial marketing. You don’t have a lot of resources and the size of the market is hard to gauge. For example, if you’re selling cell phones, you’ve got the cell phone market which is very easy to target. But, we’ve got so much diversity in the non-profit sector—1.4 million organizations. Honing your message takes a lot of creative finesse.

How do you strategically market your company? What’s been the most effective?
Leveraging social media. We use Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter quite a bit. They’ve helped us develop a network of nonprofit job seekers. Our fan page on Facebook, Will Work for Social Change, has 1000 members who signed up on their own. The membership gets updates from our website through our RSS. Social media lets us attract new people and keep in touch with them in an easy low-cost way.

If someone was starting out as a marketing professional in the non-profit field, what kind of advice would you give them?
The most important thing: be a real generalist. In the corporate marketing world you might have one focus like direct advertising. In a non-profit, you need to be a jack-of-all-trades and understand a little bit of all marketing. Internships which expose how it actually works in the nonprofit world are great. They can teach how different non-profit marketing is from the corporate or government world with their structured roles.
Lots of nonprofits might not have a marketing department or even a marketing career path. Nonetheless, you might be working as part of a development team, corporate communications, or program management. Whether people know it or not, they are doing marketing in their jobs and this really speaks to the need to be a generalist.

Clients include some young, up-and-coming names like Teach for America, Kiva, and City Year. What has it been like working with these companies?
Truly amazing. The main reason we exist is to support the hiring efforts of entrepreneurial non profits. Commongood Careers believes these organizations have the ability to make huge strides in social change. We want to be part of that story, so we get the people they need to make that change.

Green Buzz Agency wants to thank Dana for her great insights and for taking the time to talk to us today!

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It seems that today the wired world is finally forming some opinions on Google’s new Labs creation Fast Flip, released on Monday.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out at the Labs site or read Google’s explanation of their new product.

ChannelWeb looks at Fast Flip as a new business model for a struggling publishing industry: “Fast Flip and its advertising revenue sharing could be the start of a blueprint for publishers.”

Examiner.com’s Michael McConnel mentions the similarity to Google Reader: “As I use Google Reader for most of my browsing, it would be a great upgrade to Reader’s interface.”

Perhaps Technologizer’s Henry McCracken puts it best with his “it’s cool but weird” analysis. His main complaints are the “kinda cumbersome” previews, some aspects that “break some conventions of the web”, “un-Google-esque” banner ads and, well, the fact that it just “doesn’t always work”.

Whether Fast Flip misses or meets the online world’s expectations, publishers and readers can be confident in Google to continue its ambitious re-modeling of online content. Adding Fast Flip to Reader and Google News provides a full range of news-consuming avenues for online readers. Expect the Reader faithful to reject Fast Flip in favor of their meticulously controlled newsfeeds while also pining for the snazzy UI offered by Fast Flip. Google News users will shirk at the limited sources and unconventional page design while falling for the improved looks. The final resting place that Fast Flip will take if it ever gets out of its Labs incubator could be skewed toward either one of those Google services… or be an even greater departure.

See what Twitterers like @GreenBuzzAgency are saying about Google Fast Flip!

We’ve all seen the new Pepsi logo, and been struck by it’s resemblance to the Obama campaign logo, but what would you reasonably imagine it took Peter Arnell, the designer, to create it?

A recently released PDF (yes, a boring old PDF) revealed the possible background for the Pepsi logo. In 27 pages, a multitude of justifications are put forth. To some, this is the sophisticated cutting edge of design, to others it’s a load of mumbo jumbo designed to get people talking about Pepsi (like us!).
Here is the full release which is worth a read, but let’s take a look at some of the contents right here.

First is a diagram showing the golden ratio as it applies to the Pepsi logo. It seems to make some sense, but let’s move on.

How about the “Pepsi Energy Field”?:

Or how the new Pepsi logo is impacted by magnetic fields, sun radiation, and wind motion between 2008 and 2010:
And did you know that every can of Pepsi now has it’s own gravity field as well.?
The Pepsi Universe? You bet.

So, you’ve seen the document, or parts of it, but how do you think it was received in the blogosphere and in the design world? Check out a few opinions we found:

1. It’s a hoax and an effective way to create buzz

• Erik Hinton, The Pitt News: “Fake or not, “Breathtaking” is the Sokal Hoax of our times. If the document is vetted as legitimate, a punishing blow is struck to advertising and aesthetics as a rampant waste of money on puffed-up nonsense.”
• Lee of “A Hundred Avatars”: “I still wonder if that design brief was a viral leak…”
• Jessica Hartstein of Culture-Buzz.com: “Is it part of a viral campaign? It looks like we’ll have to wait for the real answer. In the meantime, Pepsi can enjoy its ride on the buzz wave.”

2. Arnell is insane/fleecing Pepsi

• Mediabistro’s AgencySpy: “Pepsi paid more than $10 mil. for the logo design.”
• Peter Arnell himself?: “It’s all bulls––t,” he said. “A logo on a can of soda? Please. My life is bulls––t.”

3. The Design World is corrupt and this is proof

• Reddit commenters: “It really hammers in the stereotype of Advertising in general, and the complete idiocy that goes in to marketing.”
• Stephanie Smirnov on PR MAMA: “It’s fine to be smart and provocative (and yes, sometimes strategic explication requires sophisticated diagramming and fancy-pants words), but a person can go too far.”

What do YOU think? Comment below!

Thanks to Dan Dawley for his expert help with this post!

On the menu for the Green Buzz Blog this week: two exciting guest bloggers, a post from our Social Media Maven Nick Barron, and finally: Photography Friday. Add us to your RSS so you don’t miss out!

It’s Labor Day and the nation’s workers are busy in their backyards working on their pig roasts, racks of ribs and barbecued chickens. Some, though, might be slaving over something called a Toynbee Tile.

Toynbee Tiles, essentially slabs of plastic carved with messages and embedded in paved roads, began popping up in the 1980s. They all espoused a paranoid conspiracy theory in a sort of code that no one has since unraveled despite many theories. The tiles are most likely produced by copycats of the original artist, and take a certain amount of ingenuity and devotion to produce–considering that the end product may never be discovered.

So my question of the week is: Are Toynbee Tiles viral messaging and how would they stack up to a modern online viral campaign? Answering this is difficult, but potentially valuable for marketing campaigns. After all, the tiles can’t cost more than $20 per tile in materials, while the buzz created is priceless. As real-world guerilla marketing is supplanted by online campaigns, Toynbee Tiles, or something similar, could garner massive exposure.

- David Cass, Green Buzz Agency