Bill Hicks, on Marketing.

Marketing creates Assumed Knowledge. Marketing campaigns are the reason you think spraying your countertops with chemicals will clean them. Why plastic is okay, and not cancer-causing. Why it’s cool or at least fine to drive a low mpg car, truck or SUV. Marketing informs us, whether we realize it or not.

On the other hand, Marketing doesn’t tell us we should care about tigers or elephants going extinct, or the rainforests getting cut down, or climate change, or Somalia. Marketing doesn’t tell us to care about factory farms or gerrymandering or lobbyists or the corruption of bankers and Wall Street, or whether or not corporations are people.  You don’t care about things without even realize you don’t care about them, because they seem like bummers, or you don’t know what to do…because the greatest marketing minds haven’t decided to tackle important. Rather, they’ve devoted their lives to tackling selling things. ~ Ed.

It’s easy to make money in marketing and advertising. Your offices are big and spacious and hip and your colleagues are hip and your conversations are hip…it’s like grown up childcare—the offices are full of games and bikes and cool free food. Problem is, you’re selling. Selling, selling, selling…and perhaps, one day, you’ll wake up and realize you’ve been busy selling out, one inch at a time.

So instead, be like one of the marketeers I’m proud to know: choose your projects carefully and mindfully, be proud of what you’re helping sell.

Not sure you give a care? Think I’m being a bit, you know, uptight and random? Bill Hicks will scare you straight:

Bonus Marketing videos: