Case histories

How to write a campaign case history

A case history is a record, not a teaser. It should let a reader who was not in the room judge the problem, the work, and the evidence, in that order.

Internal reviews and many awards entries use a similar spine: situation, objective, idea, execution, results. The labels change. The job does not. Each section should be long enough to be checked, and no longer.

The situation is the market and the constraint at the time, not a brand anthem. The objective should be something the work could reasonably affect, with a time window. "Become the most loved brand" is not an objective in this sense. "Increase prompted awareness of a named offer among a named audience in a named period" is closer, provided the starting figure is known or honestly marked as unknown.

The idea is the proposition the work carried, in a sentence. The execution is what was actually made and where it ran: the medium, the length or the format, and the flight dates. A case that describes a film but never says where it appeared is a credentials slide, not a history.

Results are the section that most often fails. A percentage change without a baseline, a period, or a source cannot be judged. If a figure comes from a tracking study, name the study and the dates. If sales moved, say whether the comparison is to the previous period, to a year earlier, or to a forecast, and say who measured it. If a result is not available, write that. Inventing a number, or implying a causal link the data does not support, makes the rest of the write-up harder to trust.

When you did not work on the campaign, do not fill gaps with guesswork. Write from documents you have, and leave blanks visible. That is how a case history stays a history.