The Case for Case Studies

Every time I recommend that a client put together a case study, they groan. Why? Too much work for too little result. Hard to argue with that. But, argue I will.

Here are the top six reasons why companies should develop case studies:

1. They are basic story-telling elements. The more complex your product or service, the more valuable a case study can be. Having case studies allows you to provide examples of how your product or service solved a compelling business problem. Let's say you are putting together a Power Point. You need examples of what you've done. Dust off the case study and voila! instant Power Point.

2. Case studies force you to consider your company's value proposition at a very tactical level. A simple case study describes a challenge, a solution and a result. Considering these three issues more critically allows leaders to make adjustments in tactics and strategy.

3. Case studies provide a window into how the author views the company's value proposition. Assigning a case study can help staff work through issues they need to master. The simple framework gives leaders a more clear understanding of how their staff addresses problems and challenges.

4. The Web demands fresh content. In meeting after meeting, clients are searching for ways to keep their Website content fresh. Case studies fit this bill and can be useful tools for search engine optimization, competitor differentiation and prospect education, among other things. Key words can be linked to products or services in other parts of a company's site or linked to partner or supplier sites.

5. Continuous learning is a good thing. Case studies are among the simplest way to get to the root of an issue not only for successes, but also failures. They're also inexpensive requiring an a couple of hours at most.

6. Nothing bad can happen as a result of creating a case study. They are like the oatmeal of corporate communications. They force you to chew on your approaches and they clean out clogged creativity. Yeah. Yeah. The metaphor's kinda lame. I still think it works, though.

In addition, to these, case studies can be used as attachments in correspondence to prospects to show them what you or your organization is capable of or as supporting material for proposals.
Media also like case studies as they define your "brand in action."

Making a First Impression

Challenge: Professional services clients typically offer a wide variety of services. This leaves them with the challenge of determining the most optimal method for quickly explaining who they are and what they do. That was exactly the case with this Executive level IT Consultant firm. It was 3's task to define the myriad services they offer and condense them into a one-page information sheet.



Solution: Projecting that more detail on the services would be needed, 3 wrote the copy for individual sheets for each service. Each service engagement is custom fit to the client and manifests in slightly different ways. By approaching the project broadly first, 3 was able to better understand and present the many permutations.

Once that information had been gathered and written, a hard look at what was truly essential to understand each service boiled down the one-sheets into the 1-2 sentence descriptions seen on the information sheet.

The art direction by Blake Frey took full advantage of the company's blue color scheme to make the information easy to digest in a quick glance.


Result: This clean, professional information sheet provides a gateway into the company's consulting services. When distributed, it will accompany the detailed one-sheets of the individual services, almost as an index suggesting where to look for the most relevant information.

From PowerPoint to Power Video: Reserve Steel

Challenge: What do you do when you've got a product that requires a lot of technical explanation for people to truly understand how revolutionary it is? Do you send them a stack of papers? Sit down with them over coffee? In the case of Reserve Steel's Intelligent Framing Systems, we made a movie. Well, kind of. Please click on the link and see what we mean.



Solution: Now, people mean different things by "movie" these days. We didn't shoot any footage, but the combination of a tight narrative with words and pictures on screen is just as effective – sometimes more so.

We had been working on a PowerPoint presentation, which contained all the information we needed to convey. But anyone who has seen PowerPoint effectively used knows that the success of the presentation is in the charisma of the speaker. 3 associate, Mason West, took all the bullet points from our original script and completely rewrote it to be more conversational.

For the visuals, we wanted to show the product whenever appropriate and reinforce specific points with text on the screen. We also played around with fun visual gags to keep viewers amused and engaged through the video's five minute duration.

Result: This was largely an experiment on our part, so the client had not even read the script before seeing the video. When they finally watched it, their response was pure amazement at how we'd given such life to the story of their product. Let us know what you think. Special thanks to Mason West for the work here.

Videos take one-day events and make lifelong memories... and content

Challenge: In early 2007, Dave's Killer Bread was attempting to raise awareness about availability of their product in Eugene stores. 3 had recommended using Eugene as a pure test market as the company had never done any promotions in the city. 3 organized a number of promotional efforts to test which efforts would work best in other cities. One of the efforts was a three-day presence at the University of Oregon Street Faire. To get extended benefit from the event, we planned to create a video to capture the infectious energy that is present at these live samplings.



Solution: We filmed all three days at the Street Faire, focusing on getting shots of people tasting the bread. Still, we walked away with almost six hours of footage. By combing through the tapes and selecting only the best moments, we pared it down to a tight five minutes. The background music was composed and performed by Dave himself, and has become a recognizable tune on his radio commercials and other video efforts.

Result: The video was broadcast via the Dave's Killer Bread web site and blog and has been viewed over 100 times in less than a few weeks by viewers in Eugene. Many thanks to 3 associate, Mason West, for his work here.

Fonts as the basis for design

Challenge:
Produce a two color brochure that people will want to read. Well, that was the ideal goal. We'd like to note that Charles de Montesquieu said, "An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations." Here at 3 we have a rule: do your best not to bore people. And so it was with our assignment for Social Venture Partners. We needed to strike the all-too-familiar balance between cost and effectiveness for the organizations primary membership prospecting collateral.

Our recommendation:
Use different fonts from the same general "family" in a way that would increase the readability of the content. We decided not to use images other than the logo of the organization to encourage people to read, not just glace, the content.

The writing needed to be quirky, but not over-the-top. Social Venture Partners mission is a serious and important one. More plainly, we wanted the writing to be approachable, fun and as non-corporate as possible.

Result:
A 5 X 7 staple bound two-color booklet that could be slipped in to a coat pocket, purse or briefcase. An unusual approach to the typical "We need a brochure" problem.

Process Graphics: Telling the story in "pretty" pictures

Here are some examples of graphics we have used over the years to express complex processes, ideas or notions of one kind or another. We've long shared with clients our belief that because we've been drawing in the sand and on walls longer than we've been reading and writing, images are often better communication tools than words.

No duh, you might be saying to yourself right about now. But, we are writers (generally) and so are most comfortable working with words. We have to push our feeble little brains into new channels of expression. Certainly there's nothing necessarily brilliant about these examples here. We just want to make sure our clients and friends have them here to refer to when they are creatively mired.

More on this issue later. Perhaps we can come up with a graphic to describe our process for using graphics?

Guerilla Sampling Success?

CASE STUDY: Promote a new coffee beverage using earned media and Internet marketing techniques.

PROBLEM:
In the early spring of 2006, we were approached by a successful beverage industry entrepreneur. He had created a concentrated espresso product. To use it you just needed to add milk (cow, soy or rice). Heat – or chill it over ice. And serve. It came in four flavors: vanilla, mocha, caramel and espresso blend with a touch of sugar. Initial research showed that the market wanted a product like this as lattes are expensive, difficult to make at home, and are the most widely purchased product in coffee shops.

The founder’s background driving beverage consumption for leading international brands was an important advantage as we sought to gain attention among Internet-savvy consumers and food and beverage editors.

SOLUTION:
Using our trademark-protected framework – Organize, Strategize, Publicize, Capitalize – we mapped out a strategy to put the product into the hands of food and beverage editors in the founder’s hometown – Los Angeles. That effort was unsuccessful. New product ideas pour into newsrooms daily; there are not enough resources to vet them all. We narrowed our focus to the editors in Glendale, a Los Angeles suburb, where the founder was raised. And while we were able to capture the attention of two reporters there (one, the Glendale editor of the Los Angeles Times), we could never get them to agree to do a story.

We moved up the coast to San Francisco, following on an angle that the product’s long shelf life and fresh-brewed taste would be perfect for offices – especially those in Silicon Valley – a place known for long work hours and bad office coffee. The San Jose Mercury News bought off on the angle and assigned a reporter to the story. While we waited for the Mercury News, we pushed north to Seattle – by-passing Portland media altogether. We believed that if the product idea made the news outside of the Portland market – the company’s home base and an internationally recognized coffee capital – we’d gain the respect of hometown aficionados and critics more easily.

We began our efforts in the early spring. By mid-summer it was apparent that reporters were not interested in hot beverage stories – no matter how novel. The summer heat – the second hottest on record in North America – led us to switch our pitch to “Iced Lattes.” It was an earnest approach, but a late one, as many monthlies are put to bed months in advance of publication. Major daily newspapers also plan their editorial content weeks in advance. Increasingly, we found ourselves at one dead end after another. We had feedback from editors and consumers claiming that they enjoyed the product – its flavor and convenience being the most notable adjectives shared. But, without wider editorial coverage, coupled with consumer purchases in stores where the product was already stocked – grocery chain buyers saw no reason to take a chance on the product.

The founder believed that without consumer awareness, the product would not move. We agreed. Although, we has a suspicion that the product required a paradigm shift in how people enjoyed their morning coffee that it would take longer then we had allotted to spur consumer demand. As of this writing, that theory appears to be correct.

Permit us a little diversion here. Lattés are not convenience products. Consumers expect them to cost more in terms of ingredients and time for preparation. In addition, sipping lattés is a social activity – most frequently done in coffee shops. It might be an oversimplification, but coffee enjoyment is a singular pursuit. Latté enjoyment is a social pursuit. Research supports this view. According to Marketresearch.com, in 2003 lattes made up 42 percent of all drinks sold at coffee houses, with brewed coffee a distant second at 16 percent. It’s possible that in the consumers’ minds they equate lattés with group or public consumption. Concentrated lattés made at home don’t have the same “feel” to the consumer.

When you think back to ads in the 1970s and 1980s, coffee ads focused on the personal pleasure one received from drinking fresh-brewed coffee at home (e.g., “The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup.”). Compare this to ads for Nescafe International Coffees, which always featured two or more people enjoying the diversion on special occasions.

In the workplace, the consumer needs at least a refrigerator and a microwave to store the milk and the open product (it’s refrigeration shelf-life is about 60 days) and to prepare the product hot. Plain coffee requires no refrigeration and only a hot pot or microwave to heat water plus either a coffee filter or a French press. Clean up is minimal.

RESULTS:
With editors and reporters at major dailies and relevant monthlies rejecting coverage – or postponing intended coverage – we turned to venues on the Web. Weblogs written by coffee aficionados were a primary target. Sites that were written by tastemakers were another (e.g., CelebrityCafe.com, PortlandPicks.com, DailyCandy.com, etc.).

We posted an offer for free samples on about a dozen sites. The reaction to the offer was immediate. Within 48 hours we received more than 50 requests for samples from all over the country. Within two weeks we had well over 100 requests. And, on it went. And while the numbers were small, we did prove the power of guerilla sampling. We received feedback from almost all of the people who received the product and were able to post those testimonials on the site.

This effort continues as we write, so stay tuned for the further results as they become available.

You think going to Mars is hard? Try Vancouver.

Challenge: There are some things you can't fully convey with words, which is a hard fact to accept in our business. But such is the case with the the intricately detailed work produced by Masterpiece Models. These craftsmen just finished a 3-month project fabricating a full-scale replica of the Mars Exploration Rover from scratch using only pictures for reference. It's an amazing feat they wanted to share. So 3 decided to organize a unveiling event the day before the MER shipped – which happened to be Valentine's Day.


Solution: Embracing the funny coincidence that the event needed to be held on Valentine's Day, 3 crafted a short release linking Valentine's with The Red Planet, Mars. Was it a stretch? Yeah, a little. But after all, if women are from Venus... Local print and television outlets were contacted via phone and e-mail but our focus was more in getting interested individuals and organizations to see this replica. Mentions were made in e-mail newsletters to Masterpiece Models' and 3's clients. Also, personnel at all local museums were contacted and encouraged to use this event as a chance to meet Masterpiece Models even if the space-related replica was not directly applicable to their museum.

Result: 10 people attended the event, which was on the high end of expected turn-out. A reporter and photographer from The Columbian were there and very impressed by the replica. Using the event as a hook, 3 has promoted posts on the Masterpiece Models blog and generated leads to other individuals and museums nationwide. The day before the event, the Virginia Air and Space Center delayed the shipping of the MER until March 1, so Masterpiece Models has been able to extend individual invitations to people who missed the event.

Environmentally-sensitive brochure design

Challenge: Create an updated tri-fold brochure quickly using environmentally-sensitive paper and soy-based inks. The client – a college housing management concern – competes for tenants with on-campus housing options. The brochure needed to be informative, hip and easy to mail.


















Solution: Working from a three-year-old brochure, 3 designed a more current brochure using relevant stock photography. Working in a team, we pulled in our printing partner, Green Dog Print Management, and our design partner, Tim Silvis of Systom early in the creation process. Post consumer waste papers were not created in a wide variety of grades, so early collaboration was key to achieving what 3 and the client ultimately wanted.



Result: The total cost end-to-end for 1,000 copies, 4-color was less than $2,800. We began the creative process on the 14th of the month and the final printed copies were delivered to the client four weeks later, a major holiday being the only cause for delay.

Many thanks to Tim Silvis of Systom for the design assistance and Todd Silberman of Green Dog Print Management for the printing work.

Dave's Killer Bread "YouTube Video tied to Radio" Campaign 2007

The Challenge: Help a radio campaign deliver measurable results.

Dave's Killer Bread is a Portland phenom. The story behind the bread is equal to the quality of the bread itself. It's the story of Dave Dahl, self-proclaimed "life long knucklehead and four time loser" who spent the better part of the last twenty years of his life before 2005 in prison. That story can be found at www.daveskillerbread.com.

We worked with the Dave's Killer Bread management team to set several benchmarks to measure the audience reaction to a six week schedule of :30 second radio spots featuring Dave.

The Solution:
First, we benchmarked the website the week before the ads were scheduled to run. We asked listeners in the ad copy to visit www.daveskillerbread.com to watch a short video produced by the radio station. Listeners could also go to the radio station website to view the video, as well. The video was hosted on Youtube.com.

Second, we created copy for the ad - a spot that would feature Dave touting the benefits of his unique products.

Third, we worked with Shobi Dahl, Dave's nephew and a manager at Nature Bake -- the parent company to Dave's Killer Bread -- to create a web offer for visitors.

We wanted to see the web traffic double from the benchmark we set. But, we also wanted to see bread sales rise, if you'll pardon the pun.

Result:
After reviewing retail sales during the period in which the ad aired, we saw a 21% increase -- no small jump. And while the bread is growing at a healthy clip, this was a larger jump than we had initially anticipated.

Virtual Space for Gracie's Dining and the Driftwood Room

Challenge:
Help a new restaurant - and it's iconic cocktail lounge -- in a much-beloved hotel gain an audience, win new friends and convert some old ones. Our hat's off to Gracie's owner, Gregg Schillinger, for the opportunity to be a part of his effort here.

Solution:
A website that is one part photo gallery, one part interactive tool. The photos on the site are the product of two different photographers. Many of the photos on the site were shot by Andy Petkus, a local photographer and event planner. The site needed to allow people to subscribe in order to promote unique opportunities. Wine events. Tastings. Special occasions and the like will be shared with the growing email subscriber list.



We also wanted to create a place where people could quickly find the restaurant, see the most recent menu, make a reservation and correspond with the banquet managers for private events. Last, we added a weblog function www.graciesdining.blogspot.com so that diners could comment on their experiences -- good, bad or indifferent.




Result:
A website that is at once elegant, simple and utilitarian. For more information, please visit www.graciesdining.com

Speaker's Bureau for National Fraud Crime Experts

Challenge:
Fraud crimes are nothing new. The dictionary describes fraud as "A deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain." Technology advances have given fraudsters a variety of new tools to practice their deception and the costs to unwary businesses and consumers is currently measured in the 10s of billions of dollars. Experts who can help the public combat fraud are in high demand. But, it's a noisy market place. As a result, so-called experts are difficult to separate from more the more experienced. Our challenge -- one in which we are currently engaged -- is to separate our client's experts from the thousands of others who claim the same expertise.

Solution:
First, we created a speaker's bureau; an organization whose sole job is to promote the speakers within. The speaker's bureau is solely focused on providing experts who can speak on the issues of fraud including check fraud, Internet scams, ATM fraud and the like. Second, we created a website to house information on the speakers. The result can be seen here: Amcrin.net. This site went live in early December 2006, and we are just now beginning to promote the service to organizations throughout the U.S. The website was designed by Tim Silvis of Systom and programmed by Darin Ingram of Grounded4Life.

Result:
As of this writing, it's too early to demonstrate any results. We will be using site statistics to establish some objective benchmarks in early January. Ultimately, though, the only benchmark that matters is how much business results from the creation of the service. We will be promoting the service to financial services concerns primarily working through associations. If you would like to learn more about Amcrin or their speaker's bureau, please visit the site or send an email to speakers@amcrin.net.

Designer, Tim Silvis, ladies and gentlemen, for Jacques Nichols...

Our friend and collaborator, Tim Silvis of Systom helped Portland lawyer, author and fundraiser, Jacques Nichols, create a business card recently. These are the result. Jacques is working on a few books whose titles are "If you want to see God's footprint, check your butt" and "Who the hell signed me up for this class?"

Jacque's most significant talent is his ability to meet people and quickly make connections to others. Jacques says, "I know you. I know Joe. You and Joe should meet." It's a wonderful and important business skill. Tim captured this in his graphic on the front of the card.

Project: Gracie's Breakfast Postcard Campaign

Challenge:
A brand new restaurant in a favorite local hotel. What to do to attract new business and not scare away the old. A poll of local businesses revealed that the restaurant had been a long-time favorite for breakfast meetings. The restaurant's owner believed that if we could gain the loyalty of breakfast patrons, it would lead to growth for the lunch and dinner business.

Solution:
We settled on the idea of a post card-driven direct sales campaign. Businesses in downtown Portland were selected to receive fresh blueberry muffins every Friday for several weeks. Law firms, CPA Firms, Banks and other professional services companies were on the list. The post cards (see here) were included in the delivery. In addition, we worked with Illy Coffee to create a contest for free coffee for those who patronized Gracie's for breakfast.

Result:
The campaign duration was six weeks. During that period, business for breakfast, lunch and dinner doubled. More importantly, catering opportunities were developed and are now the largest single source of revenues for the restaurant.

Colin Powell Boys and Girls Clubs Work

Here's an ad we wrote in collaboration with our friends at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Portland Metropolitan Area. We had the good fortune to lend a hand to the Clubs when General Colin Powell visited their Hillsboro club in the Fall of 2006.

The Clubs were given ad space by a local newspaper. The called 3 to solicit our ideas for developing an ad. This is the result. Many thanks to Joe Walsh at the Clubs for his help here!

Project: New Associate Campaign

Challenge:
A new associate joins a law firm that's less than a year old. Issues to be addressed included reinforcing the organization's creativity through an enhanced brand, demonstrating its commitment to creating a diverse workplace and - most importantly - welcoming a valuable new associate.

Solutuion:
3 brought in photographer, Tim Gunther, to give us something different than the typical head shot. We gathered the entire firm's lawyers one afternoon after work for a photo shoot to capture them "behind" Abby -- the new associate. Working with Green Dog Printing -- a local environmentally-sensitive print management company -- we created a post card that was not only pleasing to look at, but easy on the earth. The completed project was mailed to a list of the firms clients, prospects and friends. 3 sent the post card to local and national legal press.

The result:
A very happy client.

The World's First Video Fitness Game

Problem: Launch a new product in a cynical industry.
If you want a challenge, here's one for you. How do you promote a fitness game in a world where inactivity is part of the charm?

Armed with nothing more than a short video demonstration and some deep-pocketed investors that's precisely what we did in the Spring of 2004.

Yourself!Fitness -- the first fitness game for Xbox, PlayStation2 and the Personal Computer stuck out at E3 like a finger in a box of fast food fries. Hard core gamers reacted with mild disdain. But, they quickly saw the charm in "Maya," the virtual personal trainer. Within the year of the launch, Maya was elected as the sexiest virtual woman in cyberspace.

Solution:
Attendance at a game industry trade show resulted in The New York Times coverage you see here. We quickly followed up on that early success by arranging a media tour in New York with editors from Elle, GQ, Prevention, O (Oprah's magazine), Self, Shape and several others. We helped the founder hone their story, juxtapose the product against the obesity problem in school children and reinforced that idea that it was "the first game that plays YOU."

Result:
The product received wide coverage -- including photos -- in almost 1,000 publications around the world within three months of launch. A significant piece of coverage in the Chicago Sun Times resulted in a call from McDonalds. Several months later, Yourself!Fitness mini discs were included in salads coast-to-coast.

General Colin Powell 3-atively entertained.

"Eye's straight. Chin up. Face the crowd and speak with confidence." These were some of the General's instructions to several of the children chosen to ask a question of General Powell at recent ground-breaking ceremony for the Boys and Girls Clubs in Hillsboro, Oregon.

3 was asked to lend a hand with media relations logisitics and creating a unique gift for General Powell. Media were not invited to attend the event as the General wanted to ensure all of his attention would be on the hundreds of kids who missed part of the school day to visit with him. Having produced hundreds of video news releases over the years, 3 took raw video from expert videographer Brian Houtari, and turned around a short video news release for the local Portland television news.

We had the video in our hands at 3 o'clock in Hillsboro and drove to Southeast Portland to edit. All of the stations had the footage by 6 o'clock. Special thanks to 3 associate, Libbi Loseke, for making the mad dash to the edit suite where she cut the piece down to three minutes of higlights, made four dubs and got the couriers coordinated all within less than two hours. All of the stations took the video. One initially declined to take the footage because "We were not invited to attend," they said. We underscored that the event was for the children, not for the press. After reconsidering, the station relented and ran the video. It was initially a little disheartening to hear a news director complain about children being put ahead of the television stations needs.

The gift we presented to General Powell is not pictured here, but will be shortly. It is a bench with a plaque below paying homage to his visit. The design is the brainchild of rising architectural star, Erik Winter of Myhre Group Architects (www.myhregroup.com). Nice work Erik! The rendering will be used to inspire a future donor to complete the project, thus allowing those who were in attendance on that warm October day to point to it and say "I was there."

Kids are the focus on new website for Social Venture Partners Portland

Social Venture Partners Portland is a charitable organization focused on providing time + money + expertise to non-profits whose mission it is to improve the lives of children.

Over the better part of 2006, 3 worked with a volunteer team of partners to create a story-telling platform on the Internet. The result is here: svpportland.org. Special thanks to Social Venture Partners Portland executive director, Jean Hart, for her confident leadership here. Thanks also to Megan Leftwich and Les Soltesz for their guidance, support and "velvet hammer" approach to getting this important new resource completed. These two former Intel executives were instrumental in ensuring that the project was completed according to the original specifications and creative that 3 outlined.

Last, we want to thank design guru Tim Silvis of Systom for his help in taking the original idea and turning it into a work of art. Darin Ingram of Grounded4Life provided the programming expertise.

The Challenge:
The old Social Venture Partners site was over five years old. In Internet time, that's, well, old. It was a template site using a technology by the name of Plone. Plone requires the user to master their technology (not difficult for the average person) and is not particularly flexible from a design perspective. The new site needed to quickly engage the viewer and explain how Social Venture Partners works. The organization provides both money and partner time to every "investee." It is short-staffed and they receive a lot of inbound calls from organizations look for funds. With that in mind, the management and board wanted a site that would quickly help prospective investees understand how the organization worked. They also wanted to provide content that would educate organizations whose needs were not congruent with SVPP's mission, thus saving time and limited staff resources.

The Solution:
We recommended using flash to tell short stories (vignettes) drawn from the powerful case studies of the organization's successful investment efforts. We first looked at the web statistics for the site to determine how the old site was being used. That gave us an initial road map on how to build the site. Then, we wrote the vignettes and added photographs from SVPP events - augmented by stock footage where needed. From there we added the key elements that formed the navigation and content for the site. It sounds simple as I write this. But, it wasn't.

Result:
During the first week, the new site received high marks from board members, investees and visitors alike. The clean navigation forces users to select one of only three choices, thus helping to funnel users to information that -- if read and understood by the visitor -- will save time in answering questions. Staff resources remain thin at the organization, so this will be a key part of the site's job moving forward. 3 will be looking at the site's usage statistics after the first of the year to determine where adjustments need to be made.

If you have comments about the new Social Venture Partners website, please let us know by emailing us here at info@why3.com.

Thanks!