Of all the industries I thought I would go into, Advertising was one I'd been warned away from. My comedy hero, Bill Hicks, made his views abundantly clear:

"If anyone here is in Marketing or Advertising...kill yourself."

Bill took issue with those who dedicated their lives to selling people useless products they didn't need. (I'm paraphrasing; what he actually said was "There is no rationalization for what you do, you are Satan's little helpers, kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now" - but you get the gist of it.)

So it's safe to say, starting an internship called "Advertising and Copywriting", in which I also get extensive training in Marketing, made me think of Bill and wonder if he was right (I don't mean I considered suicide, this is a blog, not a confessional). And I have to say that as I continue my training in the ever-changing world of online marketing, I'm becoming more and more optimistic about my choice.

Bill Hicks died in '94 in a world where advertising was still overwhelmingly "outbound" - they found out where you hung out and they went down there and danced around in front of you, they shoved their product in your face repeatedly until you bought it, they sold with fear and they sold products people didn't need, products that would make people fat, products that could kill. (Bill was from Texas.)

I wonder if Bill would soften at the turn marketing has taken. Since we've all had to evolve our thinking into blocking out these thousands of daily interruptions to our lives, many companies are now reacting to our fresh new attitude of "If I want it, I'll Google it, now leave me alone, I'm trying to have a life."

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is marketing based on being seen on search engines like Google, making sure you get FOUND. Isn't it a comfort to know that if you're found its because someone was looking for you?

Call me romantic, sentimental, or just a plain idiot, but I find this kind of endearing. We fix up our site's content as best we can and try to get found by people who want what we have to offer. It makes me think of people all over the world fixing their hair and going out into the world, trying to find someone to love them.

It makes sense to me that in business we end up behaving as we do in life - neither in life or business do we tend to believe the first person/business who tells us they are right for us. We shop around. We find better deals. We lament those no longer around as we remember their qualities. And "uniqueness" becomes so important; in both life and business we try to bill ourselves as a "niche in the market" not only so they'll pick us, but so they stick with us, and hopefully never leave us. Ultimately and if possible, we're in it for the long term.

As an aside, ladies and gentlemen, this is a metaphor drawing on the similarities between SEO and looking for love. Which is why people who Google "hot chicks in (my area)" tend to end up regretting it. You can't mix your metaphors like that.

So who knows, were Bill Hicks still alive today, perhaps he'd be a bit more optimistic about the more honest, less intrusive, "let's get found" attitude of companies today.

At least, I hope so....

...because if Heaven exists he's someone I intend to hang out with, and I don't want to spend eternity getting my ass kicked.