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

KG Partners is helping to launch The National Football Post, a blog conceived and managed by four NFL insiders who, together, provide other-worldly insight and analysis of professional football — from the inside out. It is truly the “Wall Street Journal” of professional football media. Seriously. Check out www.nationalfootballpost.com.

Andrew Brandt, president of The National Football Post, for example, was VP of the Green Bay Packers for nine years through this past season, managing all player contracts and salary cap issues. Note: during Andrew’s tenure in Green Bay, the team had the highest winning percentage in the NFL! Talk about a guy who definitely knows how the Brett Favre deal must have come down.

A quick non sequitur…turns out Andrew was a bartender at Quigley’s, a pub in D.C. that my friends and I used to frequent - and I mean frequent - when I was at American University (this was the early ’80s kids, the drinking age was still eighteen). I’m positive he served me and my friends more than once. Now that he’s a client I’m wondering if we tipped him adequately (probably not). I asked him and he doesn’t remember either. <whew>

Anyway, other principals (and bloggers) include Mike Lombardi, a 23-year executive with five NFL teams, SI writer and elite blogger in his own right; player agents Joe Fortenbaugh and Mike Bechta (the latter also a successful TV producer, e.g., Super Agent and No Fear); and Matt Bowen, a seven-year NFL player and well-known journalist.

The site officially launches tomorrow (8/11). We’re doing the PR for the site, plus SEO, SEM and online advertising. A blast so far.

Here’s Mike Reiss’ piece in today’s Sunday Boston Globe. Andrew also did a Saturday interview with ESPN radio.

Definitely bookmark the site. As the 2008 NFL season gets into the starting blocks, keep reading The National Football Post.

Dave Goldberg

This is not a photo of Alex, another principal at KG Partners, but from this photo you can learn a lot about him. It’s a motorcycle. With a gun. And it has something to do with WWII. The end.

This is Dan, one of the principals at KG Partners. He’s on a very important conference call with a client (doesn’t his new iPhone take clear pictures?). Following this meeting, he has to run to Boston for another very important meeting. Dan has a ponytail. That’s cool, especially if you’re a web guy. Dan also forgot to shave today. That’s kinda cool too, again, if you’re a web guy. The two together? So, Dan is a pony-tail wearin’, no shavin’, iPhone usin’, important-meeting attendin’ web guy living in Portland, Maine … that’s cool!

“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”

Italian poet Cesare Pavese (1908-1950) said this about the richness of life. It’s true. What we recall and keep with us as memories, sometimes for the rest of our lives, are experiences that occur over short, transitory periods of time. For some reason the sights, sounds and feelings of these particular moments were worthy of a permanent place in our brains. On the other hand, what we don’t remember are the long stretches of time (un-moments?) in between. Our memories don’t play for us like feature films but, rather, a montage of short, staccato video clips and sound bites.

The same is true in marketing.

When we were rebranding our agency late last year (from KempGoldberg to KG Partners), we locked onto two words that form the essence of cause and effect in any marketing program: “moment” and its more energetic sibling “momentum,” respectively. We asked ourselves (too often, usually late at night, with empty Chinese food containers in abundance), why do you, client, invest in marketing? And, more important, why would you trust us with this investment?

If we create moments — brand moments –- the kind that stick in your customers’ heads and then ultimately lead them to take action, then you win. In our hyper-cluttered world of Google searches, 200-channel cable TV, triple-layer screen crawls on CNN, Twitter, Facebook, the eight catalogues in the mailbox in a day and, yes, those ads on the tops of seatback tray tables on airplanes, shouldn’t a clear, targeted, breakthrough moment for your brand be our goal?

This agency, its amazingly talented people, and this blog (welcome to it) are dedicated to creating, exploiting and celebrating these moments. So take a moment and check back here from time to time and see what we’re up to – take away a small something for your own use. Share it around. That’s our hope.

Dave Goldberg