This stuff really works

It was Lord Lever who famously said he knew half his advertising budget was wasted, he just didn't know which half. But in these digital days, it's getting dauntingly easy to measure the commercial impact of all our precious creativity.

Happily, news has reached me here at Finlay Cottage that suggests strong creative work really does get results.

For example, of the 53,653 emails sent to the worldwide travel trade for Dorchester Group Hotels (written by me through digital agency CTS), 27% were opened. Not bad, as the DM-heads among you will know. And on average, a third of the recipients forwarded the email to others. (These referrals, plus the data from bounce-backs, have turned a rather outdated database of 7,900 names into a nice clean one of over 11,700 - a result in itself.)

You might also remember Geenee, the new home exchange brand whose tone of voice I developed and whose website is all my own words. Well, they now have 667 members in 35 countries, busily swapping holidays in a variety of often stunning properties, from Alpine chalets to LA beach houses. And they're growing fast.

Geenee was recently featured in The Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper, which felt the site put "an encouraging, professional face on a proposition ... that novices might find a bit daunting." Which is good, because that's exactly what we were aiming for.