Insights from Nebo

We love peanut butter sandwiches... who doesn’t? In an age of national days celebrating Bubble Wrap, chocolate-covered raisins and talking like a pirate, we wanted to show peanut butter sandwiches some love by creating #peanutbuttersandwichday.

Some may say, “Why create another national day when we already have National Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich Day, as well as National Peanut Butter Day?” But what about all the other peanut butter sandwich creations that go beyond PB and J? What about Nutella, or bacon? Pretzels and chocolate chips. Chicken and hot honey. The possibilities are endless... and delicious!

It’s hard to remember what life was like before Instagram, but now it may be even harder to picture life without Instagram Stories. On top of needing a perfectly curated Instagram feed, it’s just as important to have beautiful stories so users can follow the lives of their friends and influencers and see behind-the-scenes of their favorite brands.

With over 500 million daily users, Instagram Stories matter just as much, and maybe more, than your main feed. In its first inception in 2016, the addition of Instagram Stories to the platform was perceived as a direct copycat of Snapchat, and Instagram’s CEO even admitted it. 

It feels like eons ago that Amazon released Alexa and Echo exclusively to Prime members in November of 2014. Today, the voice of Alexa is a cultural icon, and thousands of users across the U.S. are turning to Alexa for their daily news. In fact, 42% of smart speaker owners reported using their smart speaker at least weekly to get the news in the Smart Audio Report from NPR and Edison.

Flash briefings are a great way to start the day — especially if you’re in the biz of marketing. With the industry landscape shifting, well, pretty much every day, flash briefings are my go-to source for the latest trends and news. But with over 8,000 results for “news” in the Alexa Skills Store, how do you choose which flash briefings to tune into?

I don’t mind TV commercials. There — I said it. 

Before you call me crazy, hear me out. It’s not that I love sitting through ten minutes of dancing hamsters selling hatchbacks. It’s that I don’t have to anymore. Thanks to the Internet of Things, TV ads are becoming increasingly targeted — which means they’re becoming actually relevant to viewers like me.  

A few weeks ago, I went on vacation and decided to turn on the hotel TV. Within an hour, I saw dozens of ads that I never see when I’m watching Hulu. The ads didn’t resonate with me at all. I don’t consume dairy — I haven’t for a long time. In over a year of using connected TV devices, I have not seen a single ad for milk or yogurt. In just one hour at my hotel, I saw six different milk commercials from three different companies. Now that’s bad ad spending.

Picture this: Sunday. You’ve cracked a beer and the buffalo sauce is flowing. You turn on the TV for the Big Game, and the first ad of the night begins to roll.

It’s morning, and a woman casually runs around a corner in her activewear. Fast-forward several hours to the end of the day, and she comes around the same corner. This time, she’s in casual clothes — and holding a six pack of ultra light beer! 

Cue the eye roll. 

What came first: the chicken or the egg? Who reigns supreme: man or the machine man built?

The human programming of machine learning has given machines the upper hand in enabling them to think quick, think ahead and adapt to meet human standards of right or wrong. Need proof? Take a look at IBM’s Watson vs. the ultimate human champions of Jeopardy. Or read about AlphaZero’s matchup against human Grandmasters of chess. Each of these stories paints a not-so-pretty picture. Humans are doomed.