Insights from Nebo

I’m just going to come right out and say it.

Groundhog Day is bullshit.

Look, I get that it’s a longstanding tradition that dates back to the 1800s and it’s based on a fun little bit of superstitious lore. But haven’t we moved past all that as a society?

Think about it. An old white man from The Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club holds a rodent up in front of the sun, interprets the “Groundhogese” said rodent speaks in order to relay his thoughts on future weather patterns, and then makes sure ol' Phil gets his yearly dose of the "groundhog punch" that has kept him alive for the last 130 years so he can keep repeating this pattern every February 2. And a ton of grown adults turn out every year to watch it all go down. 

Agency people are normal … mostly.

They start their careers in marketing or advertising fresh-faced and eager. Sure, sometimes they quote Jeff Goodby at Thanksgiving, but otherwise they’re tolerable, average, all-around good people, who just want to make campaigns like the greats.

And then something strange happens. Slowly, day by day, they begin to change.

Their pant legs get shorter. Their beards grow longer. Their sock collections become more eclectic. They shun office chairs for medicine balls, where they sit judging the GMO content of your spirulina acai power bowl, and remind everyone at parties that they know how Google really works.

One day, they wake up to realize that they are no longer mere marketers. They are initiates in the cult of #agencylife.

And that’s just scratching the surface. Here’s a long list (and it’s hardly exhaustive) of the weird things that agency people do.

Project management is not only found at the office but in your everyday life. As an avid traveler who has watched over 25 hours of Rick Steves on PBS, I’ve learned that trip planning isn’t a simple task. Planning a vacation can be as complex as facilitating a client project. To enjoy and get the most out of your trip, it requires extensive planning and research beforehand. Remember, trips are an investment, so putting forth the due diligence will absolutely pay off.

Of course, I’m a type-A project manager who, in all honesty, gets anxiety just typing the word “unknown.” But even for those who *cringe* enjoy the unknown and choose to travel on open-jaw tickets, experiencing the world wherever it takes them, you may still enjoy these trip-organizing tips and tricks.

It’s that time of year again. That special season when Oprah quotes are particularly inspiring. The time to reflect on the past year and look eagerly to the next. The time to hope against hope that the weight you gained from subsisting on cookies alone for five straight weeks will melt off in a singular hour at the gym. Yep, it’s New-Year-New-You time!

But, worry not, this post isn’t about resolutions (which, let’s face it, some of us have already broken). It’s about New-Year-New-You’s sidekick, Predictions for the Coming Year. It is this time when we marketers are oft inspired to gaze into our crystal balls and pull out prophecies for the coming year. We all get real fired up on the promise of qualified growth that we’ve included in each of the strategy presentations we developed over the past few months, and we get inspired to spread the word.

Advertising at its best does more than promote a product or precisely target a demo. It does more than generate impressions or make us laugh during the Super Bowl. Great advertising inspires. It uplifts. It brings out what is best in us and who we want to be.

With that in mind, we selected 10 campaigns created by brands and agencies across the globe that inspired in 2017.

2017 was a big year for us. We called for the reinvention of an industry, went public with NeboCMS, and published our first post in another language (if you count emojis as a language). And that was just on the Nebo blog.

It’s no secret we use the blog to blast our thoughts into the universe. We talk about our industry and pop culture, the things we love and the things we hate. It’s our opportunity to write about what interests us, without the weight of client expectations or KPIs to live up to. So every week, we publish a new post about email marketing, open letters to our coworkers, or why it’s important to have fun.

And, based on the numbers, you all actually care about what we have to say.

With the help of a top secret and very complicated algorithm — taking into account things like views, engagement, and how many times it was talked about in the office kitchen — we narrowed down the 54 blog posts of 2017 to only the best of the best. (And maybe a few personal favorites because this is our list, damn it, and we’ll do what we want with it.)

Our top 10 posts tell the story of what was important to us this year. These are the ones that made us laugh, inspired us, and helped us understand things like AI and programmatic advertising. And we hope they did the same for you, too.