Copywriting, branding and other mayhem.

CBS television is about to separate from its parent company Viacom next year. CBS announced they’re going to start a new print magazine, WATCH!. The magazine will feature interviews with stars and news about the entertainment industry.

The magazine will be ad supported, and available free at Paramount theme parks, CBS show tapings, and CBS affiliates.

Will it be TV Guide ™ meets Entertainment Weekly ™ ? One blogger commented, “Why bother?”

A push poll is a negative campaign trick to besmirch your political opponent by tying them to something negative and conducting a bogus poll to spread the misinformation. For example, “I’m calling to take a poll on my opponent’s eating children for breakfast.” Assumes a fact not in evidence.

Tonight I received a seemingly innocent phone call. It was a political poll conducted by Citzens United.

United for or against what or whom, they didn’t reveal.

It was a poll about the ACLU and NAMBLA. I refused to answer the poll “questions,” but I did ask a few questions of my own. Like who the heck are you.

Citizens United is a right-wing group that seems to feel America would be better if it were more to the right. I don’t agree with that as I am a moderate, but in today’s climate this makes me somehow a Commie whacko.

From reading the ACLU site, it seems that the ACLU did defend the right of NAMBLA to have a website advocating its repellent sexual beliefs. (NAMBLA is the North American Man Boy Love Association. I do understand why no one would advocate these practices in South America or other parts of the world.)

But here’s the thing. Is this a news story right from today’s headlines? No, it is a five-year story dug up solely to attack the ACLU.

I am not a member of the ACLU, but I don’t favor attacking it in this way with a push poll, or as I call it, an attack poll.

This push poll is a scurrilous method used by Citizens United. It pushed me all right: away from Citizens United and towards the ACLU.

According to The Wall Street Journal, there’s a bunch of new interactive magazine ads about to grab inattentive magazine page flippers.

Next month both Rolling Stone and Us Weekly will include an ad for the chill-inducing new show on the WB Network “Supernatural.” The thick print ad will feature live music and an automobile whose lights flicker. I hope the new series is as arresting as this ad.

People magazine recently had an ad for PepsiCo’s Aquafina ™water. The bottle was made partly of the world’s most irresistable toy, bubble wrap. The headline was perfect for this visual idea: “Bubbles are more fun.” The agency that created the ad is BBDO, part of the Omnicom Group.

An ad for The Sopranos in Entertainment Weekly included a device that played the show’s musical theme.

But bulky inserts rapidly hit a wall of postal regulations, frankly reasonable ones. One printer, Quad Graphics, turned down the idea of enclosing a vial of baby oil in a magazine. If that vial had cracked, you’d have some angry subscribers trying to read an oil-soaked magazine.

In a thoughtful piece in the The New York Times, A.O. Scott, film critic, — listed as “a chief film critic” for the paper, but that’s another blog — tells about movie patrons who rebelled against the encroachment of ads on their movies. Not previews, mind you, but real commercials for products like Coke ™, Fanta ™, or Cingular ™ cell phones.

They had had enough. Advertising is everywhere but the savvy viewer or reader can mute its impact with new technology. Skip through those truck spots on TV with Tivo ™. Get premium cable channels that run movies and never show a kids’ cereal spot. Or even hook up a pay satellitte radio, and get music without radio pitchmen.

The protest worked a little. In New York, Loews agreed to tell patrons when their movies actually start, not when they start showing the previews and commercials. That means you’ll have be in your seat by 7:10 for the 7:10 movie. No stragglers.

That won’t stop movies themselves from featuring products, though. The recent movie The Island prominently displays Puma ™ sneakers, Aquafina ™ water and GM ™ cars and trucks. Then too, I’ve already mentioned the recent product placement champ: Herbie Fully Loaded.

But people do pay for some advertising. Cell phone ringtones are topping some pop music charts. Crazy Frog Axel F topped the British charts earlier this summer.

But amazingly, a tune designed to promote a cellphone is a major product on its own. In South Korea, Samsung’s ring tone Anymotion sold three million copies. Triple platinum.

That popular tune was written to sell a Samsung’s cellphone that costs $600. Better get the insurance.

After a Connecticut man disappeared aboard the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines’ “Brilliance of the Sea” last month, the company has sent promotional literature announcing upcoming murder mystery cruises for 2006.

The man’s disappearance is no spoof. George Allen Smith IV was on a honeymoon cruise with his wife, Jennifer Hagel. Then he vanished midway through the cruise off the Turkish coast. While rumors abound, a passenger in the cabin next door said he heard shouting , and loud noises like throwing furniture overboard on the night the man vanished.

The case was first investigated by Turkish authorities. A Turkish prosecutor said that Hagel is not a suspect. She was released by the Turkish police after questioning. The matter is now being investigated by the FBI.

The FBI says the case will not be easy to solve, as there is an international list of passengers who have now dispersed, and a moving crime scene.

By the way, the headline on the mystery cruise piece is “Expect the Unexpected.” Certainly Mr. Smith was not expecting the cruise to be his last.

To promote their new gossip celebrity publication, OK Magazine has turned a newstand into a big media event.

C omplete with red carpet, anyone buying a copy of the new magazine gets treated to paparazzi, screaming fans, and gawking tourists, confused — I suppose — by all the hype over buying a magazine.

According to a story on adage.com, Sirius subscription radio revenues from all sources have risen to $52.2 million for the current quarter, a 295% increase over the $13.2 million reported for the year-ago quarter. In addition, ad revenues doubled to $1 million for the most recent quarter, says Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin.

Unfortunately, losses widened to 13 cents per share, or $177.5 million, from 11 cents a year ($136.8 million) earlier.

CEO Karmazin predicts profits as early as the fourth quarter of 2006 for the fledging venture, which some Wall Street analysts have compared to the early days of cable.

The people at TBWA/Vancouver have created a unique interactive billboard.

It’s a special low-to-the-street billboard for Black Tower Home Security, a burglar alarm company. The board had lots of appealing tschotkes stuck to it, things like pillows, slippers, mirrors. (Sounds like stuff Alice in Wonderland would collect.)

Sure enough, people did collect the stuff right off the billboard revealing the underlying hidden message: “people steal.”

Pretty creepy and very effective. But wouldn’t seeing the hidden message on the board make you at least try to put back those slippers?

We now know what those mysterious returnees from alien spaceships drink. Budweiser ™ beer.

Is this a tabloid speculation? No, it’s eyewitness testimony from anyone who watched the latest episode of the popular sci-fi show.

After the funeral of a buddy, our heroes go to a bar to lift their spirits. They drink Bud ™, lots of it. The camera gets closeups of the product. Then they talk about how their departed friend loved the brand, buying “three cases” of it once.

“It’s just like it was back then.” the characters say. Not a bad themeline for The King of Beers ™, is it?

If you want to branch out in TV copywriting, try writing a show with product placements like this.

Move over, Herbie. The 4400 is closing in fast in the placement race.

I’ve seen the new Hyundai Dust in the Wind spots. “All they are is dust in the wind,” say the lyrics to this pop classic.

Sure, the other cars are not as good as whatever you’re selling, but dust in the wind? It makes me think right away that the other brands are less well-made and unreliable. But Suburu can’t say that because it’s probably not true, and it certainly isn’t provable even if it happened to be true.

They are for the new Suburu Tribeca SUV. I guess you’ve got to do a catchy retro tune when you introduce a new gas-thirsty two-ton SUV, given today’s climbing gas prices.

Moreover, as the Kansas song is about the futility of worldly goods, there’s certainly some irony in the spot.