DIARY: All in a day's work for Reader's Digest to titillate agencies

The surprise is the source - it comes courtesy of that bastion of wholesome family values, Reader's Digest's US headquarters in Pleasantville. Getting raunchy was apparently unavoidable.

After all, what's a title like Reader's Digest to do when even the venerable Playboy magazine can't get hot-blooded, Maxim and Cosmo-obsessed media buyers to take a look at its figures.

So it trots out a sexually suggestive - by Reader's Digest's standards it sure is - trade advertising campaign to tout just how titillatingly close it is to its loyal readers.

One execution has a woman in a bathrobe, looking up from an open copy of the magazine, with the headline declaring: 'If we got any closer to our readers, we'd have to use protection.'

In another version, a couple are pictured holding gardening tools, while the headline reads: 'If we got any closer to our readers, we'd need a pre-nup.'

New York's Needleman, Drossman & Partners created the suggestive campaign, which certainly looks like it has the legs to travel around the world.

So the $64,000 question: Will Reader's Digest see the need to titillate media agencies in Asia anytime soon?