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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.

When the band the Eagles broke up in 1980, co-lead singer Don Henley famously sneered that the band would play together again “when Hell freezes over.”

Well, for many years if you mentioned email marketing to anyone at Nebo you’d most likely be met with a response like, "Email marketing is the digital equivalent of junk mail. We don't do email marketing."

Taking a step back for a second, most everyone can agree that email marketing is an incredibly effective and useful tool. But with this, I’d also bet that most everyone can also agree that a whole lot of email marketing does in fact, well, suck. Just like junk mail.

While we felt this way for all the same reasons most folks do — spam, unsolicited blasts, lists we never signed up for, etc. — our issue actually went a level deeper.

If I had to describe me as a kid, it wouldn’t exactly be flattering. Men/boys who were as scared of things as I was would typically have been described with the very unfriendly term for a scaredy cat.

I was scared of pop-flies (and had the hit to the face to show for it.) I was scared of heights. White-water rapids, as well as six-inch drops in calm rivers. Roller coasters. Talking in class (and its next stage of terror, called public speaking.) Takeoffs and landings, to say nothing of turbulence.

And as I got older, the challenges and their related concerns simply grew.

But then in my mid-20s something magical happened. Well, to be specific, something magically terrible happened: I got divorced.

I jokingly like to refer to myself as Old Man Slutzky. While I in no way feel old, 2017 will — terrifyingly — be my 20th year of working in advertising. With this, I have had a number of jobs over the course of my career. Independent of various freelance gigs, Nebo is my seventh full-time agency job.

And while I have only been here a little over three months, I feel like I have found something profoundly different. And in turn, quite meaningful.