We’ve all heard the term “white noise.” Today we’re experiencing “green noise” – the confusion that comes from contradictory messages and politicization of a suddenly salient issue. It seems every company in America is out with a green campaign, but instead of differentiating them, most are just adding to the green noise. How do you rise above it? Matt Williams, Partner, Executive Vice President and Group Planning Director of The Martin Agency will discuss how to ‘green’ your brand from the core to create sustainability efforts that build your brand and differentiate you from your competition.

Partnership marketing is emerging as a more sophisticated, longer term, mutually-beneficial relationship between for-profit brands and not-for-profit social causes. Both businesses and the philanthropic community are finding collaboration on shared missions can create long-lasting, results-oriented relationships for all involved. Partnership marketing is an increasingly efficient and engaging way to increase brand awareness, tap into new markets, drive sales to new levels and create win-win solutions to business challenges. John Davidoff facilitates a panel discussion highlighting the challenges, benefits and best practices for creating strong, lasting, powerful relationships “green” organizations and corporate partners who share a common mission.

At lunch on the second day of Good And Green™, we've added something extra to the menu: "delicious discussion"! Back by popular demand, these lunch roundtables will be hosted by a green marketing speaker or expert. This gives you another opportunity to drill down on a topic of interest to you, network with other attendees, and —in the dynamic of "dining & dishing"— to get better acquainted with the green marketing experts at your table!.

Topics to be covered include global marketing, greening the musinc industry, online publishing, green imaging, carbon offsetting and LOHAS. So, pick up your gourmet lunch, have a seat and join the conversation!

One third of everything we eat is pollinated by honey bees and they are disappearing at an alarming rate. Honeybees mysteriously began to abandon their colonies in 2006, destroying about a third of U.S. hives. The rate of decline is accelerating, reaching 36% last winter. As Häagen-Dazs explored its own triple-bottom line and searched for ways to deepen customer loyalty and actively engage its consumers it realized that more than 40% of the ingredients it uses in its all-natural ice cream are pollinated by bees. The disappearance of the bees is a concerning problem that stands to threaten the very existence and abundance of important ingredients used in Haagen-Dazs’ ice cream. Join Dave Chapman of Ketchum and Dori Sera Bailey of Dreyer’s Ice Cream for a look at how one of the world's most beloved ice cream brands is using the power of buzz to educate consumers and raise awareness about this immediate environmental challenge that threatens the viability of our food supply as a whole.

Preview the campaign at www.helpthehoneybees.com

We are witnessing Green Fatigue on a grand scale. Consumers are resisting the proliferation of ‘green’ communications and products being pushed at them from all directions: they’ve lost confidence in what they buy, and the brands which traditionally helped them choose. This threatens everything the Environmental movement has worked so hard for, that consumers have valued, and that manufacturers and marketers have struggled to deliver. It is also threatening the credibility – and sustainability – of the marketing industry itself.

In this keynote speech, Saatchi & Saatchi S Global CEO Adam Werbach will share his vision for breaking through Green Fatigue and green-washing, to build a post-green, people-led movement that aggregates the power of marketers and consumers as catalysts for social change: call it BLUE.

BLUE is a platform for sustainability that goes beyond environmentalism to encompass social, cultural and economic concerns. Green puts the planet at the center of the dialogue; BLUE puts people - consumers and shoppers - at the center. Adam will share how to build a BLUE framework into the core of your business and brand strategy to ensure that your company—and your world—will survive.

America’s 75+ million Baby Boomers – adults aged 43 to 62 – are extremely influential in affecting the consciousness of eco-related issues across a wide range of industries. They’ve lived through the social and cultural changes of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, experienced the first Earth Day in 1970 and have been key in the rebirth of today’s environmental and social movement. With their demographic hierarchy and higher discretionary income they are indeed driving the green market forward.

One in five American adults are LOHAS (Lifestyles Of Health And Sustainability) consumers – those whose value systems and usage of goods and services are significantly affected by their concerns for health and social/environmental sustainability. About one-third of LOHAS consumers are Boomers.

Using NMI data and insight from several proprietary research vehicles including the LOHAS Consumer Trends Database™ and Healthy Aging/Boomer Database™, this session, led by LOHAS and Boomer expert Steve French, will identify opportunities and challenges among the eco-Boomer. Come explore tomorrow’s trends today.

This holiday season, you can give a gift of happiness to needy children and a gift to the environment at the same time!

Good And Green™ — The Green Marketing Conference has teamed up with Second Chance Toys, an organization that rescues unwanted plastic toys that would otherwise be headed for a landfill, and recycles them by sending them to needy children.

Tuck some clean, gently-used plastic toys in your suitcase. Bring the toys to the holiday display we’re creating at the conference. Second Chance Toys will gather the toys and donate them to local Chicago organizations that care for needy children. Additionally, by keeping these plastic toys out of our landfills – which do not biodegrade easily – you will be helping the environment. Now that’s a perfect holiday gift!

Please bring your gently-used (not new, this is a “rescue and recycle” effort) plastic toys to the Chicago Cultural Center on December 3rd. Toys must be plastic, clean, in good condition, have no small or missing pieces, and any battery powered toys need to be fully operational.

It seems everyone these days is on the hunt for new ways to ‘go green’. As our current culture becomes more aware of environmental issues, consumers are becoming increasingly sensitive to this topic when making decisions about what and where to purchase. Companies in all sectors - from technology and financial services to energy, retail and manufacturing - are looking for ways to embrace green practices. However, in today’s economic slowdown, they are under more strain than ever to demonstrate this green commitment while making money in the process. Direct marketers have also proactively begun to shift their focus towards green mailings by using sustainable resources to create campaigns that are environmentally friendly. Green practices among direct mailers are no longer a trend – they are quickly becoming the new standard to live by. As the number one leader in driving audience response, direct mail encourages marketers to practice eco-friendly methods such as, letting people easily opt out of mailings, using water-based inks and recycled materials and encouraging customers to recycle the mailing after reading it. This session will examine unique tips and techniques to ensure your direct mailings meet the green standards of today while capturing consumers’ attention in the process.

Green is mainstream. "Green" issues, long in the margins, are now discussed in homes across America, as concerns grow over the cost of energy, the safety of toys and the quality of food. The trick for media and marketers is to reach the audience where they are, not where we might wish them to be. That means not only talking their language and discussing the issues that matter to them, but also finding them where they browse on-line. As consumers turn to the Web for news and information, so must marketers. TheDailyGreen.com's editor, Dan Shapley, explains how to capture the attention of the mainstream, how to broaden the audience for green issues, and how brands can learn from a case study in 360-degree multimedia marketing by a major national retailer.

Every day the news media have fresh stories relating to communications around the environment, every week there is new – usually alarming – research connected with it, and every month there are conferences and other events and publications designed to raise our interest in the topic. On the front line at work, every hour (if not every minute) across our network of clients, we see visual requirements that are a response to – and sometimes driving – the shifting communication agenda that has ensured environmental issues are inextricably entwined with many marketing and other messages.

As a follow up to 2007’s AspEn Report, launched here at the first Good and Green™ Conference, Denise Waggoner will share Getty Images’ on-going research into the impact of media, the government, and newly formed watchdog organizations on all communication and provide insight into which way the currents are swirling around visual culture.

Innovative brand owners are looking at new, sustainable materials such as Ingeo natural plastic to enhance their value proposition and journey to sustainability. During this interactive discussion, Sarah Fister Gale from Greenbiz.com will be interviewing Steve Davies from NatureWorks and Dave Burke from Primo Water. We will explore how companies are using a fully sustainable new material in their product offering to enhance their value proposition.

Consumers are being inundated with "green" messages as never before and looking for help. Who do they trust? Where do they turn for information? Increasingly, they turn to digital influencers. And their conversations are multi-faceted and nuanced, creating "multilogues" between brands, consumers and influencers.

Environmental Digital Influencers are consumers defined by their interest in environmental topics from green living to environmental policy, their propensity to gather information on the topic and to share it with others. MS&L has unique experience with these opinion leaders and how they gather information, evaluate it and share it. Drawing from real-world experience and new breakthrough research conducted with Ipsos Public Affairs, presenters Amanda Glasgow and Sheila McLean will share the motivations, behaviors and traits of these influencers. What triggers do they respond to? How do they share information on- and off-line? The session will explore how leading brands can successfully navigate this new landscape.

LOHAS (Lifestyles Of Health And Sustainability) is clearly one of the most significant trends in today’s marketplace and is being embraced across a multitude of industries, with countless opportunities to capitalize on this wave of ethical consumerism. LOHAS represents both a description of the market for socially and environmentally friendly goods and services (at $200+ billion), and a portion of consumers within a specific geography. NMI will present new data and insights from NMI's 2008 U.S. LOHAS Consumer Trends Database™, part of a data set based on research among 30,000+ consumers across 10 countries. NMI is the only source of LOHAS consumer insight and strategy, which has become the currency and foundation upon which to develop strategies.

Workshop participants will:

• Learn how the latest LOHAS market trends create opportunities (and challenges)
• Discover how NMI’s LOHAS consumer segmentation model can be applied to your business
• Learn how the role of lifestyle and values are affecting consumers/customers
• Determine the impact of CSR on consumer behavior
• Discover new ways to distinguish your brand and company in today’s crowded sustainability marketplace
• Identify approaches to reach and impact the new breed of ethical consumers
• Learn valuable success criteria for winning in the LOHAS marketplace

From business leaders to celebrities and scientists to NASCAR-dads, "trend" is informed by early adaptors and steady stakeholders. Today’s marketing of sustainability is about "emulating the hero." But who are our cultural heroes and what can we learn from identifying them? Join John Rooks and Alisa Conroy from The SOAP Group for a fun and fruitful dialogue about the role of the Green Hero in today’s marketing strategies. Walk away with a workbook to identify and leverage your market's, organization's and stakeholder's hero group.

Sometimes a brand’s green initiatives start in middle management and work their way up the corporate ladder to the Executive Suite. And sometimes they start at the top and a whole corporation is changed in a culture of sustainability. Whatever the case, the decisions to go green – and stay green – remain at the top of these companies’ business plans.

Robert Safian, Editor of Fast Company magazine will moderate a panel of senior executives from leading brands on their green initiatives, how they changed their corporate culture, and the consumer marketing communications they employ. Each brand is unique and has a different story, and we’re sure the dialogue will continue past the Q&A session and into the evening’s networking reception.

As a growing number of businesses aspire to innovate for sustainability, brand leaders face the new challenge of distinguishing their companies, products and services in an increasingly crowded marketplace. In this session, Mitch Baranowski and Raphael Bemporad will share not-yet-released results of a new ethnographic study and national poll on the attitudes, experiences and priorities of conscious consumers and offer branding principles and practices to reach, involve and inspire values-driven consumers.

Ever think that winning customers is like the dating game? You want their long-term loyalty, but the challenge starts much earlier in the relationship: how do you even get their attention – much less a “date”?

As “green” claims proliferate and new and better eco-friendly products arrive in the marketplace, retailers and manufacturers face several daunting challenges: consumer inattention, confusion, and skepticism. Messaging to consumers doesn’t always fall on open or willing ears.

What makes one product “green” to consumers is different for different products – and for different consumers. Key to breaking through is knowing where opportunities lie across a product’s lifecycle and communicating about them effectively, from product composition and ingredients, production processes, packaging, distribution, usage and consumption, and disposal.

Earthsense founders Amy Hebard and Wendy Cobrda will share compelling new research from their Eco-Insights study that defines “green” as consumers define it. You’ll learn how product categories have distinctive patterns of attributes that consumers believe are important in the “greening” of a product successfully, as well as the growing need to shift from a “green” focus to one of sustainability. And for the large portion of consumers who are confused, you will learn about white space opportunities for brands and products to break out, educate and potentially dominate their categories by being relevant to the consumer (and even get that “date”).