Ok, let me know if I heard this correctly. We’re going to give $25 billion of taxpayers’ money to GM so they can continue to lose $2 billion of it each month. I’m no math genius but that means they will lose all of it in…let’s see…divide 12 into…carry the…bring the remainder over…A YEAR! (Right?) To be fair, if they simultaneously implemented massive cost cutting measures they could make it last another entire six months!

I agree we have to do something. If GM ceases to exist, so does the entire U.S. automobile industry (how far behind can Ford and Chrysler be?) This doesn’t just mean the end of the Big-3; it means the end of an entire supply chain — hundreds of companies employing hundreds of thousands of people. The U.S. needs this industry and it is in a very bad place. When I think about the government writing GM a check for $25 billion (a very, very…very small portion of which is mine) I get, well, angry. The word “insanity” comes to my mind.

If I believed for a minute that the decision makers who run GM could take $25 billion and magically reverse thirty years of bad decisions in order to save an industry of strategic importance, I would say go for it. But we’re talking about massive reengineering, retooling, reorganization and, hardest and most improbable of all, cultural change. Therefore, the $25 billion will be used to simply to keep GM operating as is — “keeping the lights on”, so to speak. It’s going to take something much harder than a handout to stop the bleeding and fix this industry. So what would work? Let’s seeeeee…how about selling more cars? Brilliant!

So here’s an idea: why not use $25 billion to actually help GM (and the others) sell more cars? Here’re the basics of how it might work:

1. Keep the lights on. Write a check to GM for something south of $25 billion, say, $10 billion. Sadly, GM is at that place where only a huge infusion of cash can keep them alive in the short-term. This is necessary to keep the production lines going for a while. If GM up-ends and can’t make cars then they can’t sell them either.

2. Give the rest of it to me (and all the other taxpayers, of course) in the form of tax incentives to buy an American car. Give me the opportunity to actually get something of value for helping to bail out the industry, like a car! If the thousands of American households who buy Japanese and European cars every year are offered a meaningful incentive to instead buy American, we will hear a loud, collective, “hmmmm”, as the nation pauses to consider the offer. Hey, we’re Americans. We love incentives, especially the tax kind.

Now I can’t ignore one of the main reasons why our domestic auto industry is in the shape it’s in: decades of poor quality and design vis-a-vis imported alternatives. This debate will continue, however, U.S. automobiles are now comparable in quality to most foreign-built cars and have come a long way on the design front. Look it up. Again, motivate me to shop, test drive and be impressed, and I might just buy.

3. Make it meaningful. I’m not talking about a tax break of a few hundred dollars here. I’m talking about a real incentive. How about $5,000? I don’t know about you, but for that I would not only seriously consider an American car, but I might even accelerate my next purchase by a year of so to get one. Not everyone will take advantage of the offer for a variety of reasons, but for arguments sake, at that level of incentive the industry could make up to (more math here) three million incremental car sales! Now THAT would keep the lights on.

4. Sweeten the deal. How about added tax breaks if I buy the fuel efficient variety? Yes, GM, Ford and Chrysler make them too. This way we help solve another big problem we face.

5. Make credit available. Remember that other bailout that’s underway? That one is about getting the banks to make loans again. How about car loans? Can we tell the banks that a certain amount of the $700 billion has to be for auto loans to people buying American cars? For $700 billion we can tell them to do lots of things.

6. Lower the boom. Taxpayers have to get angry about this. Sure we might get a deal on a car, but honestly we’d rather not be in this situation. If the above worked, then GM and the others will still be in business and generating life-giving cash by doing what they’re supposed be doing (making and selling cars) and not by draining the Treasury. But the underlying problems at these companies will still exist. These companies have to get competitive and self-sufficient so they can continue after the life lines run out (I’m not advocating an evergreen program here). I don’t know enough about the people running GM at the moment to know whether they’re the architects of this death spiral, but they are accountable regardless. $25 billion buys a lot of influence over decisions and decision makers. Time to use some of it. It wouldn’t be the first time.

So there you have it. We save an important industry, we use taxpayers’ dollars responsibly, we incent positive behaviors in the system, and we stimulate the economy.

That’s “Goldberg” with an “e” if you’re writing up the Nobel Prize submission.

…Don Fibich, Creative Director.

pronounce that “fibik”.

Don is the product of a national search we conducted for a CD. You don’t get to do this too many times so we were going to be very particular. We wanted deep experience (both the big- and small-agency type). We wanted someone who has worked with established brands and the up-and-comers. We wanted expertise in all forms of communications and in how to put them together into a winning program. We wanted someone who respected both the creative process and the get-the-work done process. And, we wanted someone who fit…with our agency, our culture and our clients. Above all, we wanted talent (you know, the stuff we get paid for). It was a tall order. Don is 6′5″…we grabbed him.

But enough of me talking about Don. This video is me asking Don a few questions about his vision as a CD. I snuck up on him…the best way to do these things. Feel free to drop Don a line at dfibich@kgmoment.com to say hello.

-Dave Goldberg (pronounce that “gold-berg”)

Regardless of what you think about our nation’s continued involvement in the War in Iraq, there are hundreds of thousands of men and woman who have left their families, homes and jobs to do their duty over there. They are thousands of miles away from “normal” and deserve our full, 100% support. I’ll say it again, regardless of what you believe politically, they are over there because they promised they would if asked. Eventually they get to come home (hopefully) and will have to ease their way back into a life they haven’t led in months or years. Some employers aren’t doing their parts. Con-way, a client our ours, is literally THE case study on how an employer can and should support its Guardsmen and Reservists. 60 Minutes thought so too. Here’s the piece they did on the topic that aired just last night (11/2/08).

Watch CBS Videos Online

Here’s an interesting customer experience lesson (I collect customer experience lessons, either really good or really poor. If you have one to share, add a comment to this post).

Not too long ago I was at the place where I buy my morning coffee most often. I won’t say the name of the place…ok, it was Starbucks. I like Starbucks. Always have. I respect the “buy local” efforts and do, in fact, buy coffee from some of the independents near where I work in downtown Portland. All are very unique and have distinct personalities and products. I also respect the Starbucks story. It too was once a small, local coffee house. Wouldn’t we all like to do what Starbucks was able to do?

About a year ago Starbucks opened a new store in my town directly on my route to work. It came along with a drive-through! “What’s better than a neighborhood Starbucks with a drive through?” was my first thought, followed quickly by, “how in the world is that going to work?” I envisioned long wait times in my car while everyone’s multi-syllable drink was being carefully brewed, steamed, spooned and doctored (my drink is a black coffee, making long wait lines at the Barista counter kind of annoying). But with the exception of the first few buggy weeks following the opening, they’ve pulled it off. Impressive. The wait time is the same as it is at Dunkin’ Donuts and the drive-through folks at Starbucks are very bubbly and friendly (which can be a double-edged sword at 7:15 in the morning…but that’s my problem, not theirs).

One day after receiving my coffee at the window and driving on down the road toward work, I realized that I had not been given my change. The price of my drink at Starbucks is $1.98 and more often than not I pay with two, one-dollar bills (or the equivalent thereof in quarters and dimes that I scramble to fish out from the overflowing change well in my dashboard after realizing I don’t have any bills in my wallet). Either way, the change is 2 cents. I hadn’t been paying attention during the “transaction” because it’s 2 cents — pennies that end up in the aforementioned dashboard well. No big deal I thought, and let it go.

The next day, after being handed my coffee it happened again. This time I realized it moments after pulling away from the window. It wasn’t worth going back for 2 cents, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that, although 2 pennies are relatively worthless today, I, the customer, hadn’t been given the choice of taking my pennies or letting Starbucks keep them…or for that matter dropping them into the tip jar, or putting them in the “need on take one” ashtray, or throwing them out the window at 40 miles per hour, or whatever I wanted to do with MY pennies!!

The very next day, now very conscious of my 2 cents, again I wasn’t offered them. I waited but I got the sense I was expected to drive on. I asked for my change. This was followed by a short, awkward, somewhat incredulous pause until the bubbly friendliness returned and I was graciously handed my coins. But the behavior didn’t change over the next week and I realized it was actually institutional because a number of different Starbucks associates were all doing the same thing. Were they keeping the pennies for themselves? Was it too much trouble to make the change? Did Starbucks need my 2 cents? (umm…no). It really didn’t matter.

So finally, after I got to work one morning (with coffee in hand), I called the Starbucks store in my town and talked to the manager on duty. I didn’t mention names or give any clue as to who I was dealing with at the window but in a very matter-of-fact way let her know what was happening. Her response to my story was to be appropriately appalled that her employees, her store, her brand was doing this. I told her it wasn’t about the 2 cents. We fully agreed that it’s often the small, unpleasant things that can undo the many bigger, better things when it comes to customer experience. She vowed to correct what was happening as soon as possible, including calling an all-shift meeting, posting some reminder signs in the break area, and sending a message to “regional” to share the issue with other stores.

Starbucks has all the reason in the world to ignore me and my 2 cents. But they know that I, and others who are probably (yet perhaps obliviously) experiencing the same thing can easily get our coffee anywhere within Portland’s can’t-swing-a-dead-cat-without-hitting-a-coffee house culture. More important, it was simply wrong. They listened, were genuinely appreciative I called, and took immediate action to shore up a hole in the Starbucks experience. Starbucks is a great company. Not perfect, but great nonetheless.

To this day I am offered my pennies. Sometimes I tell them to keep the change.

-Dave Goldberg

Every company has conflict. Gotta deal with it head on is what we say (don’t let it fester).

Unless you were just rescued from a year on a desert island you’re painfully aware of the financial crisis that’s boiling over as I write this posting. Pages 1, 2, 3,….,10 of any newspaper or TV news show covers the massive failures of big financial institutions, the roller coaster ride in the markets, the effects (as the candidates like to say) not just on Wall Street but on Main Street and, unless you were really out to lunch last week, the ka-jillion dollar “bailout” of the whole mess. Seriously, if someone suggested to me in January that Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros and ING would all be gone by September I’d wonder what they’d been smoking. No doubt these are crazy and scary times, however, I read a short blog posting the other day that had the affect of slapping me out of my media-induced malaise.

I’m neither an economist nor an expert on fiscal policy, but as a marketing professional I’ve been through this a few times before in my 25 year career. I spent sixteen of those years as a marketer at various financial institutions, thirteen at either big, global banks or investment banks. I’ve marketed everything from swaps to savings accounts, asset-based loans to asset-backed securities, private placements to private banking.

I bear first-hand witness to the behavior of big banks during crises. I joined Bank of Boston the same week the Fed took its credit keys away (read: no new loans until you can show us you can drive safely) in the wake of the commercial real estate disaster of the early ’90s. I lived through the global liquidity crisis in the mid-’90s following domino-like currency devaluations around the world. My favorite was the mass write-down of Russian debt in the late ’90s that evaporated the earnings of many major banks overnight (including the one I was working for). And, of course, let’s not forget the loud “pop” that ended the dot-com era, as well as the existence of many financial institutions. All of these crises created widespread panic and a tightening of credit, the life blood of economic growth.

Today’s crisis is, of course, different and unprecedented, both in cause and effect. But just when you thought the entire banking system, and life as we know it, are crashing through the guardrail and heading down the cliff, read what I read by former Commerce Bank CEO Vernon Hill: http://bankstocks.com/ArticleViewer.aspx?ArticleID=5390&ArticleTypeID=2.

It provides evidence that even if the clouds haven’t parted yet the sun is still up there PEOPLE! In short, while the large banks are reeling, and the mostly unregulated (surviving) investment banks are gasping for breath, there are thousands of smaller, community banks out there that have been largely untouched by the crisis and, for the most part, are proceeding with business as usual. Good news if you’re running a business or a household. As a matter of fact, on the very day two weeks ago when the stock market was tanking in reaction to the Lehman implosion, our banker (note: works for a small bank) was at our office with new loan documentation that extended our line of credit for another year. New credit…hmmmm…go figure. Did I mention she was AT OUR OFFICE??

Is this just an example of me seeing the glass as half-full? Yes and why shouldn’t I? Optimism works. It keeps us getting up in the morning even if we went to bed listening to doom and gloom on the eleven o’clock news. So take a breadth, gather yourselves, and stay focused on your business and personal objectives. Should we proceed cautiously? Yes. Should we panic? Absolutely not.

-Dave Goldberg

A quick post-scrip on the most recent KG Moments post…

Speaking of green…I played (or something that kind of resembles it) in this week’s Children’s Museum of Maine annual golf tournament at Dunegrass in Old Orchard Beach. KG Partners fielded a foursome. We didn’t win. However, I purchased raffle tickets for a chance to win some of the give-a-ways at the post-play barbeque. Turns out I won something! I won “Earthopoly”, a take on Monopoly that promotes sustainability and green habits (tagline: A Game Celebrating EARTH, one turn at a time). It’s pretty cool. Players collect and trade carbon credits. Instead of jail, you could get sent to The Dump. A square on the board where Community Chest should be says “Reduce” instead. The game — board, pieces, box, shrink wrap…everything — is, you can probably guess, made from recycled materials. Hours of fun.

There are a lot of “opoly” games out there. Choose wisely. For example, I have a number of copies of Green Bay-opoly (needs no explanation). If anyone would like one, let me know (while they last!)

-Dave Goldberg

I don’t know about your industry, but it’s hard to find an ad agency these days that isn’t hanging out a green shingle — blogging or writing columns in the local business section about their green expertise (which they may or may not actually have), updating their websites to purvey a greener vibe, or speaking about green marketing on some panel somewhere. To be fair, real, honest-to-goodness, dedicated green ad agencies do exist. They choose their clients carefully. No nuclear power utility clients (eek). No plastic extrusion clients (uh-uh). No food additive clients (run!). Certainly no big-box retailers (although this business model falls apart quickly as Wal-Mart becomes the largest U.S. seller of organic foods…they really have, I looked it up). Joking aside, I applaud these agencies’ heroic efforts. They’re helping to move the ball across the field of public consciousness.

KG Partners is neither a band-wagoner nor a zealot when it comes to green marketing. In our view, neither are sustainable business models nor ways to make the world actually greener. We’re like most companies today. To a person we care very much about our Earth and how to sustain it; we’ve adopted green practices around the office; and, notably, when a client comes to us to help announce, promote or otherwise further a green initiative of their own we jump all over it! Here’s an example of one client’s green initiative we worked on recently that is very real and will make a profound difference:

Con-way, Inc. (NYSE: CNW), a $4.7 billion freight transportation and logistics company and KG client, recently implemented a significant sustainability initiative. Con-way figured that they could save diesel fuel (five million gallons annually) and reduce carbon emissions (134 million pounds annually), WHILE increasing its profitability. How? By lowering the speed governors on its fleet of more than 11,000 trucks by three miles per hour! The emissions savings alone is equivalent to pulling almost 14,000 cars off the road. Pretty green for a trucking company — for any company, actually. The results are tracking to plan.

Con-way is a Fortune 500 company deeply committed to making money for its shareholders. They connected the dots between getting more green and “making more green.” And this, readers, is how it will happen. And as for us? Well we worked the PR hard on Con-way’s behalf. So hard, in fact, that since April the Con-way brand has earned more than 1.2 billion media impressions (and growing) from this program. Does that make us a “green” agency? More than most, I suspect.

-Dave Goldberg

It has been nearly a week since I asked all readers of this blog to find a new, more fitting photo to accompany our debut blog post (8/6: “This Magic Momentum”). The response has been pretty strong. I’ve received photos from genres near and far.

On one end of the spectrum, from a colleague I got a great set of Henri Cartier-Bresson photos (the “father of modern photojournalism” and publisher of The Decisive Moment, a portfolio of images of, well, decisive moments — apropos I have to admit). Compelling images and great art to be sure, but they didn’t nail it for me.

On the other end of things, I also received a great collection of awesome photos taken during some amazing personal vacations around the World, as well as some great events here at the office (some of which can’t be posted on this blog!!) Moments all, but again, not…quite…there.

There was one, however, that did the job. It came out of left field. And this is what’s great about going to work every day at an ad agency: someone is always thinking a bit outside the box. The image is well-known to most — a classic and pop art at the same time. It’s at once frightening and innocent (and fun to look at). It pays off the concepts of both “moment” and “momentum” See it here on top of our first post.

Dave Goldberg

So we launched this blog a couple of weeks ago. I drafted our opening post — how we think about the world, why we’re launching a blog, and why we think OUR blog is going to be different than the other 800 million blogs out there (it is, damn it!). The theme was “moments” (see the name of this blog) and how moments are what we remember in life and in marketing and blah blah blah…you can read the post. Then it was time to post a photo to pay off the text. So I found a photo that I took one very early morning in 2006 on Sanibel Island. See the photo above.

It was immediately suggested (a nice word for it) that this photo was more commensurate with the cover of a greeting card — the kind with the overly verbose, cursive, love poem inside, e.g., “…our love began like a sunrise over the horizon of a life not yet complete…” (Wow! note to self: call Hallmark for some freelance work.) — the kind, I’ll have to admit, I’ve never purchased. The pressure to replace this photo was (is) huge.

I’m going to cave. I need to find another photograph that screams MOMENT but doesn’t make readers feel like they’re listening to Air Supply. Remembering my Adam Smith, I’m going to let the market decide. Feel free to offer suggestions. Send photos or send ideas. I’m leaving Sanibel Sunrise for now. I’ll give it a week and see what happens. Stay tuned.

Dave Goldberg