Well so far we’ve only received one email expressing disappointment with the “appropriateness” of our last post “Death of a Salesman Isn’t Enough?”

Our emailer wondered: “aside from this comedian tasteless obscenity laced diatribe, I don’t see how this youtube video fits with your website. I enjoy checking in with your website for topical marketing news but this video is pretty bad taste and I am wondering about its appropriateness”.

Well our thoughts are as follows: Firstly, the post does begin with a pseudo disclaimer when we offered that “we weren’t too sure about this one” and secondly, we did post a pretty clear warning about the foul language.

Humour is a dish best served when it reflects some semblance of truth. Satire, especially the scathing variety, requires an underlying basis of truth. The more complex and sublime the comedians’ critical thinking skills, the more likely it is that their message will emotionally engage their audience. The real talent is in the delivery – or the packaging - of their message (aka – marketing).

For the record, “this comedian” is Bill Hicks who was a very talented and funny guy. If you’re not familiar with his work, you can read a pretty good bio of him at wikipedia. Just click Bill Hicks to go there. Bill died from pancreatic cancer in 1994 at the age of 32.

Concerning the idea of appropriateness, we’ll say this. Bills’ rant is about marketing as a mechanism to reframe an issue and manipulate a target audience. His sites are set on those whose motivation is predicated on greed. We do agree that marketing and advertising are completely based upon strategies to manipulate.

When you think of the word manipulation, what comes to mind? The connotation generally is negative – manipulation is a bad thing. Well, we think not! Manipulation as a concept is neither good nor bad. The distinction lies in the intent behind the act of manipulation.

If a business really made arsenic into a baby food and tried to advertise and sell their product, then clearly, they have bad intentions. The last time we checked, eating arsenic is generally, a very bad thing.

Sound ridiculous? How many for instances can you think of where a product, service or concept is well packaged, well advertised, well marketed but is an otherwise bad deal for the intended consumer? Your list might include cigarettes, alcohol, lottery tickets, gambling … you get the point.

On the other hand, if a product, service or concept is potentially beneficial for an intended target audience, then manipulation through the mechanisms of marketing could be considered a good thing. Messages that convince us to eat better, to exercise and to be nice to each other have good intentions – even if the merchant and the marketers are attempting to make money in the process. Win/win as it were - doing well by doing good.

We’re not taking a moral high ground here. It’s just that we get the perspective that Bill Hicks is offering us. We think his rant is pretty funny because it has an underlying basis of truth in general and depending on the context, his rant could be viewed as spot on.