Insights from Nebo

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, and it feels bittersweet this year at Nebo. 

Earth Day is always a big deal at our office. It’s a fun day full of events and education about how we can help our planet organized by our Green Team, and it doesn’t just end on April 22. All year long we compost, we recycle, we screen documentaries about the environment during lunch. This year, we even ran a six-month contest for our employees to inspire more green habits.  

At this point, you have heard this before, even from our own blog: we are living in uncertain times. This phrase has been used so often recently, it feels frighteningly surreal.

But it is true. Our world is hurting right now, and although this is a scary thought, we don’t know what the world after this crisis looks like. 

Whether people are bravely battling this virus on the frontlines or self-isolating to protect the more vulnerable, we are living in a never-ending world of the unknown. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the negativity and the fear of what is going on around us. 

But I do believe that our humanity isn’t lost. 

To say that these are incredibly tense and uncertain times is a massive understatement. Stress is high. COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on our world.

Recently I was talking to a client that happens to be in an incredibly stressful industry given the current public health crisis. The decisions they make during this time are bigger than just marketing or finance — they could literally save or lose lives.

They, like many of us, are under intense pressure to make perfect decisions. Not only do these decisions need to be perfect — they need to be made lightning-fast, often without enough information, by a team working entirely remotely for the first time. 

We’re all working in a pressure cooker.

These are uncertain times — for individuals, for organizations, and especially for businesses that have been hit hard by the evolving COVID-19 crisis. 

That’s why we’re sharing the same communications advice we’ve given our clients, free for anyone to use and share.  

At this point, we don’t know what will happen. No one can predict the future. We don’t know the timeline for this pandemic, and things are changing on a weekly, daily, hourly basis. 

This is our moment to make a difference and help a lot of people. We need to protect our businesses, our employees, our customers and the safety of the public. 

If you’ve ever dipped your toes into paid media, you know how fast things change. Everyone is fighting to get in front of the same audience, whose attention is getting harder and harder to reach. The amount of ads thrown at consumers every day is enough to give anyone a headache. But for some reason, instead of putting our iPhones down, we would rather take an Excedrin and lose a few hours of sleep scrolling through Instagram, where we discover that an ex-boyfriend has a new girlfriend, who happens to be really cute. Then we sign-up for a FabFitFun box, because in that moment, it feels fitting. 

Advertisers are getting smarter. I mean, we don’t just sign up for a FabFitFun box after seeing one ad on Instagram in a vulnerable moment. We sign up for a FabFitFun box because it promised us happiness through the videos we saw on Facebook, the Snapchat stories of girls unveiling their boxes and the commercials we were served on TV. All of these things led to a purchase. But, how do these ads hit us at the exact moment we’re willing to pull the trigger?

Goodbye Linear TV? Not So Fast 

With the rise of streaming services, smart TVs and on-demand viewing, more TV lovers than ever are cutting the cable cord. But does that mean linear TV will soon disappear? The plummeting numbers of cable customers say yes, but cable companies might still have a few tricks up their sleeve.   

It’s hard to deny that linear TV (more commonly known as cable) has its appeal. Linear TV is familiar and comfortable. Sitting on the couch, flipping through seemingly endless channels is easy, mind-numbing fun. And linear TV is reliable. You know that if you tune in at 9 p.m. on Wednesdays, you’ll catch the start of “Modern Family.”