There's a different between 'promotion' and 'bait and switch'. There's also the matter of the externalities of the products you're promoting.

If Hicks marketed his shows as life-changing experiences which'll give you a bigger dick, then just ran normal stand-up, it'd be right to criticise him.

Just as it's right to criticise companies who claim to sell 'food', show ads of nice happy, healthy families, and throw buzzwords around to manipulate customers at the detriment of their own health and lives.

The hijacking of language by megacorps is sad. Words have meaning, backed by history, tradition, and culture, and shouldn't be used as marketing tools to get consumers addicted to slop.