Insights from Nebo

Let’s time-travel.

The year is 2005. I awake to the sound of My Chemical Romance playing from my iPod alarm clock. I roll out of bed, straighten my hair, and put on all my Hot Topic favs before grabbing a Gogurt and walking to the bus stop. 

The truth is, I’m kind of miserable.

An awkward, insecure kid so deep in the closet that I don’t even realize it. This is the year I decide to start watching the news, and the only break from the Iraq War is…Hurricane Katrina. It’s not a great time!

There’s an old saying in our industry: “Marketers plan. God laughs.” Okay, if it’s not a saying, it should be. 

In many ways, marketing has always been a game of chance. We pore over spreadsheets, deploy our ever-growing arsenal of “disruptive” tech, and triple-check against audience personas. Then, we cross our fingers that everything pays off as planned. But these days, there’s too much at stake to rely on hope as a strategy. 

SEO is changing… again.

But this time, it’s not just a tweak to the algorithm or a new best practice. It’s a fundamental shift in the way people find information in the first place.

For the past 25 years, search has followed the same basic playbook. You typed something into Google or Bing, scanned a list of links, snippets, videos, and “people also ask boxes”, and clicked your way to an answer. Brands optimized to rank. Consumers skimmed. The interface evolved, but the underlying model stayed the same.

Alysa Liu was one of the top figure skaters in the world before announcing her retirement at age 16 in 2022—she was burnt out, overworked, and wanted to experience normal life as a normal girl. Homeschooled and isolated from friendships and peers from the age of 5, she wanted to make friends, get her driver’s license, and simply “do other stuff.” 

The skating world was shocked when she announced her retirement. And all of her competitors took a sigh of relief.

In 2004, a little company called NeboWeb was born. We opened our first office on Mitchell Street in downtown Atlanta, starting with nothing but hope and optimism that we could get our business off the ground and make great work in the process. Facebook didn’t exist yet. Gmail was an invite-only beta program. Shrek 2 was at the top of the box office. We had a ton of passion and a little know-how. And we had no idea where the future would take us.  

The first Super Bowl I ever watched was the 2nd Super Bowl rematch of the Cowboys versus Steelers. The Cowboys lost. My toddler heart was broken, and I thought it was the worst thing that could ever happen.

I loved the Dallas Cowboys. Each year, I’d circle Cowboys and Steelers figures in the JCPenney catalog before Christmas, hoping Santa would put them under the tree (along with other potential Cowboys presents). 

Every day, my toy Cowboys defeated the toy Steelers on my bedroom floor.