Ira Kalb, president of consulting firm Kalb & Associates and marketing professor at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, says there's nothing new under the sun with Morgan Spurlock's ("Super Size Me") new film, "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold." "The movie is just another negative portrayal of marketing. What's new about that?" he writes, citing "Death of A Salesman," Oliver Stone's "Wall Street," and "Mad Men" as examples of portrayals of sleazy marketers. (I must interject here, though, that Kalb misses with Miller's Willy Loman, who is deluded, desperate, and tragic, not a "sleazy marketer." …

Jodie Foster concedes it has been kind of hard to market her dark family drama, "The Beaver," with a star who has more baggage than Marley's ghost. But she dismisses arguments that Gibson, her friend, with whom she co-stars in the movie, is going to kill the film. "Not only is he the right person for the role, but in some ways the man I know is exquisitely right for the film." The movie wrapped in November 2009 and was slated to debut at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, but then came Gibson's fracas with ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva …

The company's biggest U.S. campaign includes TV and a billboard in New York's Times Square. There will also be new print ads, baseball-related advertising, and consumer promotions. The new TV ad, "Be One with It," focuses on the driver's feeling of "being one" with the tire and the road. The spot will run on ESPN, Discovery, Spike, Speed, CNN, Food Network, History, TruTV and FX, as well as regionally in top markets. Hankook also signed on as sponsor of the current season of "Car Warriors" on Speed Network. Print advertising will include placements in both auto enthusiast and consumer lifestyle …

Online shoe and apparel retailer Zappos gets as many as 1,200 people to come look at its suburban Las Vegas headquarters as a way to spread the Tony Hsieh gospel. The tours are led by "culture guides" who take fans of Hsieh's Delivering Happiness book through the headquarters. Angeline Close, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Nevada, said the tours are a form of experiential marketing, a way to show off brand personality. The company offers four free tours a day, four days a week, a $47 elaborate version and a two-day boot camp on …

TV, PC and mobile phones have a new partner, or competitor in the analysis world: out-of-home video. Since these screens are proliferating on gasoline pumps, billboards, taxi tops, bus stops and even beer spigots in sports bars, Nielsen numbers show total exposure by specific marketers and where they happened. The top location is bars and restaurants followed by health clubs, retailer Best Buy and then hotels.

During last year's college football season, there were new title sponsors on several bowl games, such as the TicketCity Bowl and GoDaddy.com bowl. The NCAA has launched a Division I Bowl Licensing Task Force to examine how these deals are being made. The Division I board of directors has also approved a three-year moratorium on new post-season football bowl game licenses. The actions follow reviews of operations of the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Ariz., and Insight Bowl, both under The Fiesta Bowl non-profit based in Scottsdale, Ariz. An internal report of the organization showed malfeasances like excessive executive …

Hyundai Motor boosted profit by 46% for the quarter, winning sales from Japanese rivals, whose production shortfalls from the earthquake last month has production on chocks. Hyundai saw net income increase to $1.75 billion in the three months ending March 31. The automaker's global vehicle sales rose 9% last quarter versus the year-ago period, as it rolled out new vehicles like the Grandeur premium sedan in South Korea and the Accent small car in China. By contrast, Honda fourth-quarter profit missed analysts' estimates as its net income plunged 38% for the three months that ended March 31.

Cupcakes have been the fad for a while now, but pies and fruit tarts are coming back. Seventy percent of consumers eat dessert once a week, according to a Technomic report. Retailers say desserts sales stayed strong in supermarket during the recession.

A third of traffic to quick serve chain Red Robin's website is coming from mobile devices. The company realizes it needs to build on that. The company now has a mobile Web site that has directions to stores and an opt-in for future marketing. A new Customizer iPhone app lets users choose menu items and calculate nutritional values. A campaign, "Answer the Call," that launched this year includes mobile elements to tout value-priced options.

Film star Angelina Jolie will get £4.5 million for being central to a campaign for the French fashion label Louis Vuitton. Annie Leibovitz will, reportedly, shoot the campaign in coming weeks. Ads will appear in newspapers and magazines in the country later this year. The deal puts Jolie on top of the cash heap. Gwyneth Paltrow gets £1.9 for her Estee Lauder deal and Nicole Kidman has received £2.5 million per year to be the face of Chanel perfume.