Meet the Author

It was a normal Friday. Rachel Thompson was driving home after a fairly intense week. Despite being exhausted from work and deep in thought, she was being an attentive driver.

Boom. A dog shot out in front of her car, and thanks to some fast reflexes and good driving skills, she narrowly avoided hitting it.

Now most people driving through a rough area of downtown Atlanta would simply be happy that they didn’t hit the puppy and keep going.

But Rachel is not most people.

Social media marketing is broken. It’s broken for several reasons. Some we can control. Many we can’t. The main challenge marketers have in creating a long-term, coherent social media marketing program is that the social landscape is chaos personified.

There are many drivers for this (and we explore those below), but chaos represents both opportunities and challenges. The first step is understanding why there is chaos. The next is understanding what we can control. The final step is creating a strategy to help navigate and thrive in the ever-changing social realm.

However, let’s start with some of the main reasons the social sphere is in disarray.

Before I throw stones at others, I’ll throw one at myself. I’m guilty. And Nebo is guilty. As much as I want to believe we’re pure and a force for good. As much as I want to believe we’re against suffering and stand for the rights of others. As much as I want to believe we’re changing the world for both humans and animals, even in just small ways.

We’re still guilty.

Anyone who knows Nebo or has read any of our content knows that we believe organizations need to do more than just turn a profit. We need to be a force for good. We need to add value to our customers, but also to the world that we live in. We need to have a purpose. To make an impact. To play a role in helping shape this world into a better place AND have a healthy, sustainable business.

With this in mind, Earth Day has always been something we’ve taken seriously. We want to minimize our impact on the environment. This is something near and dear to us, and is one of the reasons we’ve always bought and used recycled paper, avoided animal products when possible (no animal should have to die so we can have a blue-er cup or can wash our hands), tried to be energy efficient, recycle, and preferred vendors that are sustainable and environmentally-friendly in general.

Each year we try to be a more eco-friendly company. Each year we also celebrate Earth Day. The planning for this usually brings a flurry of ideas and green initiatives that we “plan” to implement going forward.

Each year some of those ideas see the light of day. However, many don’t.

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.