One-To-One Marketing: Direct choice: Discovery Channel mailer - Robert McNab; Creative director; Rapp Collins

The mailer now entices you to read further: 'Got to know more about your target audience? Well, here's our two cents worth'. And there they are, two bright, new shiny cents stuck to the page.

The coins are a device to help you 'discover' more about Discovery Channel's viewers, as they are needed to scratch off the silver film covering pictures and text.

So you scratch, and you scratch, and you scratch...and what's your reward?

A list of facts and figures supporting what they clearly stated in the first place: 'Discovery has more affluent viewers with deeper pockets than any other cable channel'.

By now, you've probably had enough scratching. That would be unfortunate.

Because there's more - a Discovery Channel DVD gift set, of unspecified content. Shouldn't this have been made more of? I know one media executive who actually missed this 'reward' altogether.

To be fair to the creators, it's a great idea for a DM piece to get the readers interested and actively involved, always.

But if you give readers too much to do for little reward, you're liable to lose them - there's the rub!