Media

Unilever: "Viva Marketing!"

The multinational consumer product company Unilever "has launched ViveMejor, a multimedia marketing initiative that targets the Hispanic community" in the U.S. The PR firm Edelman's multicultural practice is heading communications for the campaign. The campaign includes a magazine, "distributed for free at grocery stores and online ...

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Hogging the Picture

The Harley-Davidson motorcycle company has arranged a deal with the film school at the University of California-Santa Barbara that recruits students as cheap labor to make Harley ads in the form of "short sponsored videos for online media or for downloading to other digital media platforms such as cell phones, iPods, and PDAs." Under the terms of the "partnership," students submit proposals to Harley-Davidson, describing the type of video they plan to make. If approved, the company pays a stipend of up to $1,200 for each proposal, and a prize of $5,000 to the winner.

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Nigeria Strikes Back at British American Tobacco

Tobacco companies target Nigerian youth (Photo by Essential Action)If you think the U.S. tobacco industry is bad, you'll find the behavior of many of the same companies overseas to be truly shocking.

Happily, the industry is beginning to be held accountable for its operations in the Global South. Nigeria's two largest states are following the lead of U.S. states, in suing British American Tobacco (BAT) of Nigeria, its U.K. parent company and Philip Morris International for the health care costs of treating sick smokers, The Times of London reported this week.

The new lawsuits demonstrate the importance of the online public databases of previously secret tobacco industry documents. The 1998 U.S. Master Settlement Agreement required major tobacco companies to reveal millions of pages documenting unethical -- and even illegal -- marketing, public relations and lobbying campaigns. A lesser-known treasure trove is the British American Tobacco Documents Archive, which has made some seven million pages of BAT documents freely available. These documents are of particular importance to countries like Nigeria.

New Participatory Project: Covering the 2008 Congressional Elections (U.S.)

Update: It's early, but the campaigns for the primaries of the 2008 congressional elections are starting to heat up, especially on the Democratic side, with everyone from Dennis Kucinich to Albert Wynn to

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The Not-So-Free Press, Worldwide

After giving an interview to Afghanistan's Tolo TV in which she called the Afghan parliament "worse than a stable or a zoo," because "at least there you have a donkey that carries a load and a cow that provides milk," Malalai Joya was suspended from Parliament.

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