Movin’ On Up: Cool Rules Pronto has a New Address

This is the last Cool Rules Pronto post at this address. I’ve migrated the entire blog (past articles and all) to a hosted site: http://atomictango.com/blog.

The move was pure hell — you’d think WordPress would make migrating easier — and it’s not quite complete. You’ll probably find a few bugs (and I hope you’ll tell me about them). No, my opinions are not bugs. That said, most of the migration is done thanks to the amazing efforts of Bethany Siegler of UniqueThink.

All new posts will be posted at this new site. For those of you extremely cool people who subscribed to Cool Rules Pronto, first, THANK YOU! and, second, SORRY! You’ll need to re-subscribe on the new site.

And if you haven’t subscribed, well, now would be a completely awesome time to do so, no?

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE NEW HOME OF COOL RULES PRONTO

Enough with the Fluff! A Recession is No Time for Management B.S.

by Freddy J. Nager, Founder & Fusion Director, Atomic Tango LLC

"My hit HBO series is over, and my stock portfolio is worth dirt, and you're telling me to 'be resilient'?!"

Pass the paper bag, I’ve got emotion sickness.

I’m perusing Harvard Business Publishing’s website, and a headline snags my eye: “Use the Downtown to Your Advantage“. Hmm, that sounds compelling. What kind of killer advice could the gurus of Harvard Business bestow upon us mere mortals?

What I subsequently read makes my eyes roll like rubber dice on a craps table in a 6.7 earthquake.

Worth Repeating: MBAs Fail to Communicate

“Next to analysis, communication skills must count among the most important for future masters of the universe. To their credit, business schools do stress these skills, and force their students to engage in make-believe presentations to one another. On the whole, however, management education has been less than a boon for those who value free and meaningful speech. M.B.A.s have taken obfuscatory jargon — otherwise known as bullshit — to a level that would have made even the Scholastics blanch. As students of philosophy know, Descartes dismantled the edifice of medieval thought by writing clearly and showing that knowledge, by its nature, is intelligible, not obscure.”

– Philosopher and Business Consultant Matthew Stewart, “The Management Myth,” The Atlantic Online, June 2006

Prepare for Takeoff. Again. And Again. And Again… JetBlue Offers “All You Can Jet”

by Freddy J. Nager, Founder & Fusion Director, Atomic Tango LLC

Never unpack again.

Suddenly, millions of Americans are making lists of where they would like to go. Others are wishing they hadn’t wasted all their vacation days during the summer. College football fans are checking their team schedules and packing extra jerseys. And Gov. Mark Sanford can park the state jet for a month.

In a deft bit of marketing, JetBlue is offering an “All-You-Can-Jet” pass that lets you “fly JetBlue anywhere you like, as often as you like, from September 8 to October 8″ for only $599.

Just Break ‘Em: Not So Cool Rules in Marketing and Media

by Freddy J. Nager, Founder & Fusion Director, Atomic Tango LLC

For all our talk of freedom, we Americans LOVE rules…

• Our favorite sport, football, has the most rules of any sport on the planet.

• Poker players make up new rules with every hand (“threes and hearts are wild except for the Queen, which you can pass to the right if someone sneezes during play”).

• Our institutionalized belief systems — whether Rastafarianism, environmentalism, or even Libertarianism — bristle with rules of what can and can’t be done.

• The August issue of Wired features an entire section on rules, “How to Behave: New Rules for Highly Evolved Humans,” which includes a few illuminating ones by Brad Pitt (“Don’t take a picture of your wife’s butt. That’s silly. Take pictures of other people’s wives’ butts.”).

• And, of course, as its name indicates, this here blog occasionally lays out rules for marketing and media as laid down by a higher authority (me).

Want more proof that most of us are rule-snorting junkies? Take this here Internet, where many users routinely cry “net neutrality!” and “information is free!” and “hands off, Feds!” — YET first-comers to any new website, network or medium are quick to impose rules that newbies must follow or die.

Out of the Office — and over at Drew’s Marketing Minute

Today I’m guest blogging over at Drew McLellan’s esteemed blog, Drew’s Marketing Minute. In my post, “Not Safe For Work”: Chief Reputation Officers & Other Executive Excess, I dissect the silliest statement about management since Sarah Palin claimed “executive experience.”

United States of Generica 2: Radio Shack Becomes “The Shack”

by Freddy J. Nager, Founder & Fusion Director, Atomic Tango LLC

Previously on Cool Rules Pronto…

Pizza Hut became “The Hut,” evoking images of Jabba — or worse.

Now word comes that another iconic American brand has likewise simplified:

Radio Shack is now “The Shack,” evoking images of a giant basketball player. Their new tagline, “Our Friends Call Us The Shack,” makes me wonder what their non-friends call them.