Cool Rules Pronto

So I’m thumbing through the latest issue of Wired magazine (which, by the way, features a brilliant article on the music industry by David Byrne) when I come across an attractive painting of beer. (What’s not to like?) As a huge fan of microbrews, I stop thumbing and say “talk to me!” but the only words in the ad are the name of the beer and the tagline “Artfully Crafted.” And the first thing that pops in my mind is not a desire to quaff the brew, but a distinct sense of disappointment: “What a waste!”

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“I’m so full of action, my name should be a verb.”
- Big Daddy Kane

While doing the consulting thing in Silicon Valley, I met far too many execs and entrepreneurs who said that marketing was not necessary. “Just look at Google,” they’d tell me with smug grins. True, Google never spent a dollar on advertising their product, but they did invest time and imagination into creating wicked strategies. Let’s look how Google came to rule the search universe and, eventually, the world…

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“If we don’t get some cool rules pronto, we’ll be bogus, too!”
– Sean Penn as Jeff Spicoli, Fast Times at Ridgemont High

It was one of those seminal Big Bang moments in pop culture: a single work that launched careers and trends while capturing the ‘tude of a whole generation. The 1982 film Fast Times At Ridgemont High featured Sean Penn in a breakout role that spawned hundreds of Hollywood slackers, from Bill & Ted, to Beavis & Butthead, to most of the characters in Jud Apatow’s recent movies. Penn’s Jeff Spicoli wore checkerboard Vans sneakers, turning them into instant icons. And the screenplay was written by Cameron Crowe, who went on to write and direct other culture shaping films, including Say Anything and Jerry Maguire. With all the pieces in place, Fast Times was crude, adolescent, shallow, and pure creative genius.

Now, a quarter-of-a-century later, I’ve created this marketing-and-media blog named after the film’s most quotable line, which is a joint-production of both Crowe and Penn. Crowe’s original script reads, “If we don’t come up with some cool rules ourself…”; Penn then swaps in the oh-so-critical “pronto” for “ourself,” demonstrating the inestimable value of a single word.

My goal with this blog is to promote other acts of pure inspiration in an increasingly cluttered mediascape, with a focus on advertising and marketing. The marketspace is currently enjoying new works of genius by the likes of GEICO, Apple and ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky. At the same time, we’re enduring senseless acts of bogusness perpetrated by the likes of Wal-Mart, my beloved Democratic Party (sigh), and most of the so-called marketing execs in Silicon Valley.

I will be brutally critical, I will be tongue in cheek, I will be anything but professional in my search for other “cool rules” in marketing and media. Note that these are not “best practices,” to be followed or imitated; they are simply examples of brilliance that will hopefully inspire more seminal Big Bang moments in pop culture. While we can’t all be as culturally influential as Jeff Spicoli and the rest of the Fast Times crew, we should at least give it one hell of a shot… pronto.