"Halliburton, one of the most politically charged and controversial corporate brands in the world, has a new head of communications," reports PR Week. Wendy Hall, the company's former director of communications, resigned in April. Her replacement is Cathy Mann, a graduate of Texas A&M University who has worked at Halliburton and its subsidiary, Brown & Root, since 1992.

Mars Inc., the candy company that makes Snickers bars, M&Ms and Dove chocolates, used to spend $1 million per year subsidizing a newsletter which claimed that eating chocolate could prevent cavities. Now it is funding research that says chocolate is good for your heart. According to PR Week, the company has hired the Weber Shandwick PR firm to help promote its new CocoaVia brand, with the slogan, "Be Good to Your Heart Everyday." The New York Times reports that Mars is even placing its new CocoaVia bars in the health food aisles, near nutrition bars rather than candy, in retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target. Noting that the new chocolate bars are still high in fat and calories, independent nutritionists remain skeptical, "saying that the effort seems less of a breakthrough than a sly way to scare up chocolate sales."

Walter Carl, a communications professor and advisor to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), has a weblog where he follows the scuttlebutt and media coverage relating to buzz and guerrilla marketing. Recent items include a link to last year's 60 Minutes segment on "Undercover Marketing," a piece by Seth Stevenson about a sneaky marketing campaign for Burger King, and a Boston Globe article about buzz marketing on college campuses.

With the passage of the California Safe Cosmetics Act of 2005, cosmetics companies will have to tell California state health officials about the ingredients in their products that might cause cancer. It would seem that the American Cancer Society would be a natural supporter of this kind of legislation, but grassroots cancer-prevention organizers found this not to be the case. "The bill’s proponents said that one of the new law’s biggest obstacles was the silence of the ACS, the most powerful cancer-research and cancer-lobbying organization in the world. The ACS is now the second-largest charity in the world, with a net worth of over $1 billion and an average $1 billion in annual revenue," journalist Mary Ann Swissler writes. ACS denies its silence on the cosmetics bill was due to industry influence. Nonetheless, the bill's "chief opponent, the Cosmetics, Toiletries and Fragrances Association (CTFA) gives $10 million annually to ACS’s 'Look Good, Feel Better' makeup program for cancer patients," Swissler reports.