Insights from Nebo

Have you ever gone home excited to binge-watch your favorite Netflix show, only to discover your internet connection is incredibly slow? So slow that you wait, watching that spinning wheel for what feels like an eternity, but it’s so painful that you finally give up?

It’s been said that America has no culture of its own. Three days ago, I thought that was true. After all, even the most ‘Merican of the ‘Merican traditions come from everywhere but America. Fireworks come from China. Hot dogs were invented by the Germans. Baseball — that great national pastime of ours — was first played in England. And Justin Bieber is from Canada.

For the 4th of July, I set out to write a post debunking so-called “American” culture and traditions. But in the words of the Scots poet Robert Burns (words later stolen by dirty thieving American John Steinbeck — go figure), “The best laid plans of mice and men often go askew.”

Instead, I found a story that represents everything America stands for. It is a tale of entrepreneurship and the great Melting Pot; of the American Dream; of fast food, corn syrup solids and red dye 40.

It is the most American story of all time: the story of the Flamin’ Hot Cheeto.

From the launch of the first BlackBerry smartphone in 2003 until sometime around 2014, in the marketing and tech industries, every year was declared “the Year of Mobile.” As marketers, we didn’t really know if or when the Year of Mobile had ended until it was suddenly, really, clearly over. Without a doubt, the Year of Mobile is behind us, and the marketing buzzword of choice is now AI.

We’re about to embark on the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling that made marriage equality possible for all. We celebrated in 2015 and we’ll celebrate again this year, because this is something we celebrate every day.

With Father’s Day coming this weekend, it got us thinking about what’s really important and meaningful about the holiday, aka the presents.

In talking around the office, everyone had their own thoughts about which presents were better/worse. But because we are smart marketers, we decided it didn’t really matter what we thought, as much as what real people thought.

So without further ado, we give you the qualitative and quantitative results of the mostly scientific, but not quite Pew Rated, Nebo Father’s Day/Mother’s Day Survey.

We talk a lot about our culture here. (I mean seriously a lot.) But one small, unusual — yet meaningful — thing we do here is around birthdays.

Every Friday, we have an all-agency meeting at 2:30, also known as Beer Friday. The fact we have it every Friday — no matter what is happening — in and of itself is unique to any agency I’ve ever been at. We cover the normal stuff, like agency news, account updates, hirings or folks leaving and so-called “kudos” for a job well done. But my point to this post (at least, I think I have one) regards birthdays.

See, like most every agency, we celebrate folks who have had birthdays that week. And we do the awkward thing where we call them up in front of everyone and have 85 or so people sing to them. It is, sadly, mostly out of tune. (When Brian has his way, the singing is kicked off by Google Home.)  

But we also have a birthday tradition that seems uniquely, quirkily, well, Nebo.