What’s the Best Format for a Case Study? You’re Asking the Wrong Question.
Photo by Andy Tyler via Unsplash
If I asked you what the best format for a story is, what would your answer be?
You might respond with another question: “How am I going to consume this story?”
Would you prefer to fully immerse yourself in a sensory experience and watch it as a film? Or would you rather curl up on the couch and read it as a book? Maybe a book is just the thing for your commute because it’s easy to carry and consume in chapters.
Are you experiencing the story alone? Or are your kids with you? If it’s a bedtime story, you’d probably shorten the word count and add visuals to keep it engaging.
In other words, there’s no single “best” format—it depends on the context.
Now, let’s change the question slightly—What’s the best format for a case study?
I get asked this a lot by agencies and it’s the wrong question.
A Case Study Is a Story First—Format Comes Second
Regardless of length or medium, a compelling case study follows a classic story arc:
Step 1: It starts with the exposition (the client’s situation and business problem)
Step 2: This leads to rising action (the ups and downs of research and creative problem solving)
Step 3: The story builds to a climactic moment (a campaign launch)
Step 4: Which is followed by falling action (what happens after the campaign launch)
Step 5: And finally concludes with a resolution (the results and lessons learned)
A case study will be effective if two things are true:
It’s structured like a story.
It adapts to the situation in which it’s being told.
Better questions to ask
Rather than fixating on format, start by asking:
Who is the audience?
In most new business situations, it’s a prospective client, but it could also be a current client, an awards jury, a journalist, or a job candidate.
What are the circumstances?
Is the audience reviewing the case study without you present? Are you presenting it live? Do they already know your agency, or is this their first impression?
What is your objective?
Are you helping a prospect qualify you early in the sales process? Or are you further along, providing deeper proof of expertise? Maybe you’re at the final decision stage and need to arm a champion with evidence to persuade other stakeholders.
Once you have thoughtful answers to these questions, then you can determine the best format.
Common Case Study Missteps (and How to Avoid Them)
Lack of context and nothing at stake
I used to teach an Effie Awards submission workshop and to prepare I’d go through the judges feedback compiled from the year before. Over and over, the judges pleaded for agencies to do a better job of establishing context.
What position was the client in before the project?
What triggered their need for change?
What challenges did you anticipate?
What was at stake if you succeeded—or failed?
Hook your audience early by making it clear that you and your client embarked on a challenging journey.
No narrative arc
If you establish the context, you’re off to a good start. Don’t forget to pay it off by following the five steps above. Tell us about your creative journey and the decisions you made to solve the problem.
Good stories have ups and downs. Your case study should have them too. Don’t be shy about telling your audience what was hard, where you may have stumbled and how you recovered. That tells your prospect so much about how your commitment to helping your clients succeed.
Too many visuals
This may sound counterintuitive. After all, isn’t a case study meant to highlight the work you produced?
Yes, but sometimes agencies confuse a case study with a portfolio. The purpose of a portfolio is to display your ability to create work for different platforms and in a range of visual styles (or even show mastery over one unique style).
A case study demonstrates how you solve problems. Context is crucial and it’s hard to establish context with just visuals.
Too short
Many agencies want shorter case studies—but they focus on cutting words rather than strengthening the story.
Yes, brevity is important. But clarity matters more. Follow the five-step story arc, then edit without sacrificing substance.
Take inspiration from Ernest Hemingway, who reportedly once won a bar bet that he could write a 6-word story that would bring his audience to tears.
The story? For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.
Overinflated results without context
Agencies often rely too heavily on impressive-looking numbers. Of course the results of your work are important! But without context, they’re meaningless.
Tell your audience why a metric is important and tie that metric back to the problem you were trying to solve.
It sounds so obvious, doesn’t it? And yet it’s amazing to me how frequently I read case studies that fail to do this.
Marketers are astute professionals. They can see right through an attempt to dazzle with metrics that mean little. You’re making it difficult for them to assess the work and therefore easier to overlook it or even worse, tune out and ignore it.
If there’s no “best format”, where should you start?
Start with your archival version
I encourage all my clients to have an archival version of their case studies that includes campaign assets and client testimonials. This is a longform, written case that tells the complete story. It serves as your master version, ready to be adapted—whether for a pitch, website, or awards submission.
Can this be a significant investment in time? Absolutely, but the investment is worth it when you realize that you’re not reinventing the wheel each time or scrambling for background info that only the project manager who left the agency two months ago knows about.
Should you do a video case study?
I’ve seen agencies spend too much time and money creating splashy video cases that rarely get used.
Why? They lack flexibility and there are few situations where they’re appropriate.
Early in the sales cycle, prospects want to qualify you quickly—and reading is faster than watching a three-minute video.
Later, when they’re more engaged, the video may feel too generic to address their specific needs.
At the final pitch stage, you want to maximize real human interaction, especially if that exposure is limited to the final presentation. Nothing drains the energy out of a room better than “allowing your work to speak for you” and cutting to a video case study.
Offer the right story in the right format
The desire for agencies to find the “best format” for case studies usually stems from two reasons.
They want to streamline new business operations.
I’m all for efficiency. But case studies are your most important sales tools—they deserve real investment. They bring the intangible alchemy of what you do to life. They demonstrate that, yes, it’s not only possible but likely that creative lightning strikes twice in the same place.
They think prospects don’t want to read.
For sure, no one wants to slog through jargon-laden case studies filled with buzzwords like “multi-platform performance-driven campaign.”
But you know what humans love? A good story.
And when it’s a good story, length has little to do with it.