The WPP Group's online advertising firm Bridge Worldwide offers its clients what it calls "marketing with meaning." For ConAgra, the firm created the "Start Making Choices" website, which "conveys nutrition, exercise and other well-being tips from cardiologist James Rippe ... as it weaves in messages and sponsorship from the company's Healthy Choice, Eggbeaters, Hunt's, Orville Redenbacher and Pam brands." To promote Abbott Laboratories' Glucerna brand products for diabetics, Bridge created a "Diabetes Control for Life" program. The program website offers food and health tips, which Bridge says help "participants lose weight and have better blood-sugar management," while "Glucerna product consumption increases ninefold." Using a similar approach, Johnson & Johnson "has funded what it calls the world's largest database on children's sleep," which just happens to "point out to parents that giving their babies a bath before bedtime helps get them to sleep (which doesn't hurt the world's largest purveyor of baby bath soap)."

The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) "has been leading an 'aggressive' public relations campaign ... in an effort to roll back ethanol mandates that passed in last year's energy bill," reports Anna Palmer. GMA "hired Glover Park Group to run a six-month campaign," after realizing that "rising food prices ... create a window to change perceptions about the benefits of bio-fuels." GMA "also expanded its lobbying contract with Dutko Worldwide." In March, GMA began searching for a PR firm to help it build "a global center-left coalition" against ethanol and hire "trusted third-party experts" who would link ethanol to global hunger and poverty. Glover Park's winning proposal to GMA suggested attacking "whatever intellectual justification might still exist for corn-based ethanol among policy elites," including through "third party research" shaped by the PR firm; launching a website; and possibly creating a "costumed 'mascot' ... to drawn attention and distribute advocacy materials at local supermarkets." U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of corn-rich Iowa, who strongly criticized the anti-ethanol PR campaign, posted GMA's "request for proposal" (PDF) and Glover Park's response (PDF) on his website.

After the New York Times revealed a secret research contract between Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and Philip Morris earlier this month, Style Weekly, a Richmond, Virginia newspaper, investigated VCU President Eugene Trani's personal financial ties to the tobacco industry and concluded that "Trani is the tobacco industry." Style found that Trani receives an annual retainer of $40,000, including stock options, plus fees totaling $3,500 per year for serving on the board of directors of the Universal Corporation, a leading global supplier of tobacco leaf. University spokeswoman Pam Lepley said she didn't "see any connection" between Trani's getting paychecks from both the Universal Corporation and a university that operates a medical school and school of public health. Lepley added that Trani's being on the board of Universal Corporation "doesn't really pertain to the university."

Former G.W. Bush Administration White House Press Secretary Scott McClellanFormer White House press secretary Scott McClellan has published a new memoir titled What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception in which he writes that President Bush sold the Iraq war to Americans using a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war." McClellan, known during his time as press secretary as a staunch defender of Bush Administration policies and the war in Iraq, writes that Bush aides "had outlined a strategy for carefully orchestrating the coming campaign to aggressively sell the [Iraq] war ... it was all about manipulating sources of opinion to the president's advantage ..." McClellan also admits that he allowed himself to be deceived about the exposure of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and suggests that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby may have worked behind the scenes to coordinate their stories about the Plame leak. The book's official release date is Monday, June 2.

In early April, the global oil company Chevron announced that it has entered into a five-year deal with the foundation created by the professional golfer, Tiger Woods. Woods proclaimed that "Chevron has a track record and a commitment to bettering the communities where they operate." Chevron's record, such as its partnership with the Burmese military dictatorship on the Yandana gas pipeline is "certainly nothing with which Woods should want his name attached," writes Dave Zirin in The Nation. Asked about Chevron's record, the president of the Tiger Woods Foundation, Greg McLaughlin, stated that its partners share its mission to help young people. "President McLaughlin should think more seriously about what Chevron is and what they do: they pollute, they destroy, they conspire with dictators, and heaven help anyone who gets in their way. Now they want to burnish their 'brand' by partnering with Tiger Woods," Zirin concluded.

On March 27, a coalition of Democratic House candidates and military experts unveiled the "Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq." As one of the more solid commitments to end the war, it has generated a lot of buzz lately as more than 50 candidates have endorsed it. With the Iraq War as the foremost issue this season, an endorsement of the plan is a critical piece of information about a U.S. congressional candidate, so we need your help to add it to the profiles of candidates that make up Congresspedia's Wiki-the-Vote project. (If they haven't endorsed the plan, you can call attention to that as well.) No experience is necessary and full instructions for helping out can be found here. It's your democracy - participate!