Best practice case study guide

In this article find out how to create a best in class case study for brands on the platform

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• Why case studies are key to your agency profile 
• Types of case studies
• Structure
  • Headline
  • Subheading
  • Overview
  • Challenge
  • Insight
  • Strategy & approach
  • Solution
  • Results and learnings
  • Case study video
  • Imagery
• Case study thumbnail and tags
• Top tips
  
  

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Why case studies are key to your agency profile 

We have hundreds of case studies on the platform, which are integral to agency profiles. Our best practice guide is designed to help agency members create engaging case studies for brands.

Case studies are a deep dive into your success stories to display the value you have brought to a client. It’s simple to write a case study describing ‘what’ happened but the real value for clients is in the ‘why’ and this is specifically what brands are seeking when visiting the Creativebrief platform.

Ensuring that you are not selling your agency but writing case studies in a way that is fuelled by insights and a perspective from your strategy/planning teams as well as establishing a more educational tone will resonate strongly with our brand audience.

As you read through the guide, you’ll uncover the key components of what makes a compelling case study. Using the suggested structure and further tips will help to create engaging case studies, which in turn, will increase your visibility through personalised content alerts sent to brands, your agency’s position in the Top 30s leaderboards and opportunity to feature as the case study of the month in our newsletters and extra amplification in our brand communications. 

Types of case studies

There are two ways you can approach a case study:

1. One single campaign or project
2. A story of a brand's journey over a time period

Suggested structure

Headline

Your headline needs to be attention grabbing and compelling. What will make the client read this case study? Keep it short and succinct.

Subheading

The subheading is great for adding clear defined sections in the case study which will help guide the reader through the story.

Many brands like to read case studies with subheadings marking out the different sections, it's up to you whether you choose to use the same ones we've suggested below: 'Overview' 'Challenge', 'Insight', 'Strategy & Approach' 'Solution', 'Results and Learnings' or, if you'd like to use your own language or tone of voice to represent your agency brand.

Alternatively, subheadings are also useful to add additional information. Use them to summarise the case study in a maximum of 2 lines.

Overview

Rather than jumping straight in, start by providing a brief overview of the client and your specific remit for context

• Have you been working with them for a number of years?
• What has been the brand’s journey to date prior to your involvement?
• When did you work on the brief?
• What markets did the brief cover?
• What was your specific remit?

Challenge

Give an overview of the core challenge the brand was facing and the problem the work set out to tackle

• What was the business issue that you needed to solve?

Insight

This is where you show your understanding of the target audience

• What was the specific insight that led you to the proposed strategy and approach?

Strategy & approach

• Using the insight, what strategy did you devise against the challenge?
• What was your approach in answering this brief?

Solution

In this section share the ideas, platforms and creative thinking that brought the insight and
strategy to life

• What was your solution to the challenge the brand was facing?
• Tell us what you did, what you executed and/or activated
• Share insight about the media channels and activations which supported the work

Results & learnings

Share your results that you achieved as well as your learnings

This is arguably the most important bit and the more transparency and honesty you bring in here, the more powerful it is as a case study

Clients are looking for data-led insight rather than quotes about what a great job the agency did, so the more data and insight you can bring, the better

• What impact did you create for your client?
• What impact did the work have on sales and market share?
• Are you able to provide sales statistics and specific ROI data?
• How effective was the campaign?
• What challenges did you overcome?
• Did you take a new approach to a target audience or product category? 
• Post the work going live, what did you and your client learn?
• How can these learnings apply to other clients and/or be more general take outs for others?

Case study video

A short (2 min maximum) summary video to accompany your written case study. The video is a version of the written case study that is entertaining and easily digestible.

• Did you submit the project or campaign for an award entry and you can repurpose the video? 

Imagery

Choose visually engaging imagery that supports and breaks up your case study copy.

• Which visuals best represent the work you did for your client?
• Which visuals are key to the story?

Case study thumbnail and tags

Case study title and summary

Use the same title as the headline of the case study. This title will appear in personalised content alerts, on your profile and on preview pages.

It needs to drive clients to click through and view the case study in its entirety.

Add as much detail as possible in the case study summary. Again this is what will be predominately visible before a user clicks through to view the case study in its entirety. Think about including:

• What was the universal challenge?
• Did you harness a new consumer insight?
• What is the key learning from the case study?
• How can you use the key insight to help fuel the universal appeal of this case study to give the client a taster of what is to come?

Thumbnail image

Use engaging images. These will be visible on the 'Case Study' page of your profile. Consider choosing a consistent theme with all your case study thumbnails or bespoke per case study. 

Tags

Tagging your case studies with all three tags (discipline, sector and business objectives) increases the chance of your case studies being discovered by brands in the search and will enable your case studies to appear in content alerts. 

Tips

• Our suggested word count for the full case study is 800-1200 words
• Copy and paste your text from Text Editor if you're using a Mac and Notepad on a PC to avoid corrupted html text.
• Remember your audience and who you are talking to. Just because you are
  aware of your client’s brand – does not necessarily mean others will be.
• Whilst you are sharing what you have done for one client, the key is making sure it has a wide appeal to brands that are facing a similar challenge, no matter the sector.
• Get the planner and or strategist who worked on the brief involved. Ask them to write the case study. 
• Do not underestimate the power of data and statistics – this can be
  extremely compelling in telling your story.
• Are there any graphs, charts or article snippets that support the effectiveness of your campaign?

• A good testimonial is where the client outlines the value that was achieved,
  not simply selling the agency.

• Ensure that the case study represents your agency brand through the tone of voice used in the copy and the images and presentation of the case study.