What Bill Hicks was literally getting at was that to use your talent as a wordsmith to create wants where there are none and to pursue money without any consideration for ethics by trying to translate each and every human emotion into the dollar equivalent and a 'hook' by which to gain acess to peoples wallets is a very wrong thing.

Comedians will exaggerate grossly in order to make their point. See Carlin, Connolly and many others for more examples of such behaviour.

It's up to us to separate out the core facts from the poetic license.

The kind of marketing that the great-grandfather post of this comment referred to is exactly the wrong way to use marketing.

There is a book by some guy called 'how to win friends and influence people', it is a great example of how not to use skills with words, it is simple manipulations and there is a world of a difference between manipulation and reasonable discourse between consenting parties.

The latter is what sets us - amongst many other things - apart from the animals, not our ability to 'market' or to 'sell' where no need exists.

Marketeers now routinely employ psychologists in order to learn better which of our buttons they should push in order to get access to our innermost feelings so that we go and do what they want, consume their product.

For a nice example have a look at this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi63rXnuWbw

And tell me what you think of that.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion = Robert B Cialdini

I agree with Mr Hicks, using your intelligence to find ways to psycologically manipulate people is pretty low.

In other words, they improve their marketing. How ironic.