Clients and Agencies have been overly relying on case studies to build confidence for a long, long time. Agencies often use case studies to demonstrate how smart they are to new potential client teams. In this way, case studies become succinct stories, usually showcasing only a slice of a more complex partnership to tell the story the agency wants to tell.

We caution our clients about being too reliant on agency case studies. That said, case studies do have their place in a thorough agency review process - the trick is to know when and how to use them.

Case studies can be useful in Written RFPs. This is a way for the agency to establish credibility and prove that they have the relevant experience to the client team.

Recommendations to Clients: When reviewing a case study, remember that the work done was based on the goals, budgets and needs of another brand. Focus on the strategy, the agency’s ability to story-tell and how the agency supported their client to achieve their goals. Also, consider if the agency showed work that increased or decreased your confidence in their ability to help you achieve your goals.

Recommendation to Agencies: When writing a case study for the client, we recommend you include direct language about why the case study is relevant for that specific client. Add a section to your case study that explains to the potential client how your previous work applies to them, the learnings you’ll leverage for them and anything else that will help them see themselves in your work.

We believe that case studies are often helpful for initial vetting and confidence building. But, should case studies be included in pitch meetings?

No.

Tenx4 never includes case studies in pitch meeting agendas. While this might be surprising to some, let us explain why.

Pitch meetings should be about building trust and confidence between the client team and agency. In place of generic case studies and creds (which leads to generic and philosophically-based conversations), we create a custom pitch meeting agenda that is solely focused on the goals and objectives of the client.

The meeting should feel like you’re already working together and talking about what matters to your team.

In order for this to happen, your client team needs to:

1. Understand what you’re solving for
2. Clearly share your challenges and goals with the agencies
3. Ask the agencies succinct questions
4. Give the agencies the information they need to prepare a thoughtful response to the pitch assignment

This way, both sides are having a conversation about how you can work together towards your common goals. Case studies often distract from this fluid conversation. It interrupts what the client wants to talk about (your goals and your challenge) with a story about what mattered to someone else.

It’s almost like when you’re telling someone a story about something that happened to you, and they interrupt you to tell you about someone else they know who had something similar happen to them. It’s like, “Cool, so what does that have to do with me?”.

It is human nature to want to share a story to show you understand what someone is going through by telling someone else’s story. But, this often has the adverse effect. While it can be the intention to share a case study to add to the conversation, they often take away from the conversation.

However, another way for case studies to add to the conversation is during the final stages of an agency review process. Clients can find it helpful to get a deep dive into a particular service or channel. Often times, these case studies are not only anchored around the work, but focused on how the work was done and how long it took to do the work. In this way, case studies become a helpful tool to showcase process and timelines.

While we believe case studies can be useful to show client teams insight into example work, thinking, strategies, etc., there is another BIG challenge with case studies that we encourage our clients to consider: Does the team who worked on that client still work at the agency and will those people be working on your account?

With such a high rates of agency turnover and limited bandwidth of teams, chances are that the team who was responsible for the case study is not the team who will be working with you. While we believe in the intellectual property of agencies and know that there is much knowledge sharing across departments, offices and teams - we also know that so much of the work that is done is based on the actual team.

Recommendation to Clients: When shown case studies, it is fair for you to ask if anyone on your potential team was part of the team who contributed to the case study. Furthermore, it is fair to ask for a client reference for that specific case study as well.

Case studies do have a place in the agency review process. We simply recommend using them to assess the capabilities of your potential agency partner in the right ways and at the right time.