Marketing doyen Ivan May has a go at those offering fake degrees, and those who call themselves marketeers after a three-month course.


I often wonder how many careerism marketers, aspirants, their loved ones and extended families have fallen prey to the charlatans of the marketing industry itself.

In the medical profession, they call them quacks. Those who claim to have the qualification, but in reality do not. Those who ply their trade on an unsuspecting, gullible public. Those who 'graduate' from some fancy sounding tertiary institution after anything from a five day intensive course in marketing, to those who stick it out and call themselves "Marketers" after a gruelling three month discourse!

Not to be outdone in the field of so-called management degrees, the Success Institute, alias the Niland Institute, run by one Mervyn Niland of Benoni1, offers, wait for it, the One Day MBA.

And for the real stayer, the Weekend Crash Course MBA -- covering in all 26 topics ranging from the entrepreneurial approach, to becoming a master of business administration through Galileo to Gates and Buffet to Branson, to power marketing.

All this for R2,336.

The mini- and micro-MBA are also available as part of the repertoire. He's surely going to require a group product manager any moment now.

Not only do you get and I quote, the next best thing to the MBA, but (SFX: fanfare of trumpets) a gold framed MBA certificate.

Mr Niland, in his efforts to attract custom, then lures his unsuspecting and ignorant management aspirants to hang their gold framed "MBA" certificate with pride and get on with the practical application of being a true Master of Business Administration by showing the world your ability to succeed in business and amassing a fortune.

And if that's too expensive for you, in Mr Niland's bag of tricks, he now offers corporate South Africa the 60 minute MBA, completed in one hour, over breakfast, at R3,250 per group.

Mr Niland bills himself in his viral email marketing campaign, as the Richard Branson of Benoni, having formulated FLIGHT Hand Cleaner in 1959.

He abuses numerous other big names in an attempt to provide his activities with legitimacy and underhanded, implied endorsement -- from Sol Kerzner to Deepak Chopra; from Maggie Thatcher to one Dr Emmanuel Zwane of Mpumalanga; from Readers Digest to Federal Express from Shell to Bank of New York.

The list is star-struck, star-spangled, atmospheric and worthy of a Woody Allen award of sorts.

He's been stopped by the Nelson Mandela Foundation from using the former President's name to blatantly endorse his institute's MBA. Likewise by Professor Andy Andrews, a former Dean of Wits Business School and Henley Management College.

Having been challenged by the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa and the country's higher education authorities, Mr Niland now refers to his institute's MBA as Mervyn's Best Advice. Get it? MBA! Talk about ethics in marketing?

No wonder we as professional marketers find ourselves up the creek without a paddle, often not welcomed in the boardrooms of corporate South Africa.

Now I ask you? If that is not playing to the vulnerable, the dispossessed in our society, then what is? Those eager and willing to pay for an education, any education? But let's complete the Success Institute's product portfolio, aside from FLIGHT hand cleaner.

Mr Niland, as ostensibly a true blue-blooded marketing professional (I suppose I'd best be careful, he'll next be quoting me in his relentless quest for business), segments his market and follows the dictum of carpe diem, seize the day, the moment, the opportunity.

However, in Roman Dutch law the injunction caveat emptor applies. So buyer beware!

But maybe two people are having the last laugh on us concerned marketing professionals?

Evita Bezuidenhout who 30 years on still has her script written for her by politicians; and Mr Niland himself, whose viral email campaign is typeset in Comic Sans.

Marketingweb