As the career slides ever further into the "dark side", I take guilty pleasure

My career, viewed from one perspective, has been a steady progression from the noble and high minded to the grasping and sordid.

I began my adult life training to be a journalist, filled with dreams of championing the truth and keeping the world safe for democracy. Starting salaries and market realities soon drove me towards the corporate world, but I was in employee communications. I reasoned that I was still a representative of the people, doing good by helping others to do their jobs better. Another twist of fate, and the necessity of jobs on offer, drove me into PR. I was less comfortable here, given the atmosphere of spin and the idea that I was now sometimes in an adversarial position with those journalists I esteemed so much. And still, at heart, was.

Eventually I got the hang of PR and once again justified my choice. My background allowed me to find hard news, to be an advocate of the journalists, to find and package the truth in a way that helped both the company and the press. And always, I consoled myself with the fact that we weren't marketing. Marketing people destroyed the English language, paid no attention to the realities of the outside world, wasted vast amounts of money and generally lived in an ivory tower unrelated to the world I knew. They were evil, and the fact that I was NOT one of them was the single greatest bulwark I had constructed against the fear that I had "sold out" from my youthful journalistic aspirations.

Then in June the corporate wheel turned again. Circumstance dictated a move to marketing from a PR role that had become the proverbial "burning platform". And so I became what I'd always held in contempt. The frightening part? I'm enjoying it enormously.

And so I became what I'd always held in contempt. The frightening part? I'm enjoying it enormously.

I contemplated this odd evolution of fate yesterday, walking across Waterloo bridge with the throbbing, vibrant heart of London spreading out on either side of me. I was coming from a lunch at the Savoy, where I'd been a speaker at the International Advertising Association London. I was made a big deal of, sat at the head table and given an introduction so laudatory I hardly recognised myself. I rarely had this sort of opportunity when I was in PR. Now they're coming thick and fast. Next week, I fly out to Vienna as the guest of the conference organiser to speak on media partnerships and content strategy at a telecommunications branding conference.

And it's not just the external profile that's shifted. Almost overnight, the sense of respect for what I do amongst my peers and the amount under my control increased. My team and I all became eligible for bigger pay increases: the marketing job family pays more than the PR equivalent. It's actually more intellectually stimulating as I work across a much wider pool of agencies and vendors, and have a broader set of intellectual challenges to face. And, let's be honest: the perks are much better when you own marketing budgets.

I suppose I will soon come up with some justification for why I'm actually doing good as a marketeer, and haven't really betrayed the eternal search for truth, simplicity and the perfect story. Perhaps yesterday was a start. I was, after all, presenting on green marketing, and how those of us in the IT industry can use marketing to promote a sustainable agenda. Thus saving the planet. Even so, I suspect it will be quite a while before I can say "I'm in marketing" without a small internal shudder of revulsion; a mental hair shirt to counter my external grin of self satisfaction.