Your Case Study Is a Story. Start Treating It Like One.

I’m a storyteller by nature. That's why I love case studies.

Presenting a well-constructed case study to a roomful of prospective clients was one of my favorite things about the job when I was running biz dev on the agency side. Setting the scene, weaving the tale of how we stepped up to the challenge, inserting moments of suspense, resolving everything into a satisfying conclusion.

And the audience would engage. People naturally paid attention. And they would remember it—I'd be told later that our work for a particular client was what made them realize we could meet their challenges.

I was a pretty good presenter, but I don't chalk this up to presentation skills. I chalk it up to the power of a good story.

So when I heard David Baker on the Two Bobs podcast say he dislikes case studies, my heart lurched a little because I have a lot of respect for his opinion.

"How can he possibly not love the magic that is woven by a good case study??"

(Blair Enns goes on to say he's a fan. Phew.)

But then David explained: agencies never write case studies that make them look bad.

He's right. And the reason there are so many crappy case studies is that most agencies forget that
case studies are stories. Break them down and the structures are identical, just with different terms for each step:

The challenge is the inciting incident. 

The quest for a solution is the hero's journey. 

The campaign launch is the climax. 

The resolution is the result.

So that's the first problem—agencies neglect the structure. One thing doesn't lead to another. The story logic is lost and the audience gets confused or bored.

The other problem is contrast.

The hero's journey is not friction-free. Your case studies shouldn't be either.

I mean, it wasn't easy, right? You had to figure stuff out. You probably made mistakes. There was likely a point where you wondered if you could pull it off. But in the end you got a great result for your client.

One of my favorite case studies to present was for a national juice brand. We'd been hired to take a tired legacy brand and inject new life into it. From the start, there was a question of whether we'd succeed where other agencies had failed. Most people had written this brand off as irrelevant.

Already, contrast. The odds were against us.

And we launched a successful campaign. The client saw great results.

Until they didn't.

This was the part of the story I relished—the day we realized our brilliant campaign wasn't producing results anymore. Crap.

We went to the client. We told them we had a problem and went to work figuring out why. Within weeks, we had an idea how to fix it. A new campaign went to market and sales started climbing again.

That moment of reversal told prospective clients everything —

That we were transparent partners, willing to admit when our solution stopped working. 

That we were nimble and quick to find an innovative fix. 

That we were in the foxhole with our client, ready to act under pressure.

And here's what I never had to say: "relentless," "innovative," "nimble," "problem-solvers." (Blech!)

The story did that for me. That's the power of a well-crafted case study.

(Blech!)

The story did that for me. That's the power of a well-crafted case study. 

Here’s another way to think about it, compliments of Oren Klaff and his great book Pitch Anything:

Put a man in the jungle.

Have wild beasts attack.

Will he get to safety?

It’s that last question that gets us to sit up and listen. It’s instinctual, our brains can’t help engaging. We must know how the story ends!

But to capture our attention, you gotta include the beasts.

Why? Because that’s what tells your prospects what you’re made of, that you will be as brave and innovative and determined for them as you were for their other clients.