Ira Kalb: Morgan Spurlock Lies!

• BNET, Friday, April 29, 2011 11:45 AM

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." Maybe he means "All My Sons"?)

In any case, Kalb writes that Spurlock's characterization of marketing as essentially pollution castigates an essential function of business that, "when done correctly, informs and differentiates ... marketing is not the culprit. Bad marketing is. You can find good and bad examples of any profession. Why deceive people by using bad examples to define marketing?"

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