How to write a case study

How to write a case study

Case studies provide ideal opportunities to leverage business successes and can be used to reinforce your core messages through “story telling”. They provide audiences, including journalists, with a picture of the benefits your business provides its clients.

Market research consistently shows managers refer to the experiences of their peers when making purchase decisions. You most likely have many “stories” and it would be a shame if you didn’t tell your audiences about the successes you have.

Case studies follow the same format:

  • Identify the challenge a particular customer faced.
  • Describe the solution provided by the company.
  • Illustrate the measurable results gained from using the service.

Many publications require case studies to be written in a specific way, for example Marketing Magazine submissions require the following structure:

  • Background – what were the contexts of the case study?
  • Objective – what did the company hope to achieve?
  • Strategy – how did the company plan to achieve the objective?
  • Execution – how did the company actually implement the strategy?
  • Results – what were the results of the execution? Did they align with the objectives? What did the company learn from the whole experience?

When writing a case study we interview our client as well as their client so we can include quotes and get both sides of the story. The story should demonstrate how your company’s product or service was a key factor in solving your client’s problem. It doesn’t have to be solely about your product or service, but your influence must be vital to the success.

Here is a sample case study that we have achieved extensive online and print coverage for Prime Digital Media.

Case Study: PDM and Boost Juice – marketing to youth

A New Slice of Digital Media
Out-of-home digital (OOHD) media is the fastest growing slice of the marketing and communications pie. As the Australian media landscape becomes increasingly fragmented, OOHD is a new media that businesses are adopting to influence purchasing decisions and elevate brand awareness.

This rapidly emerging new media solves many of the problems plaguing traditional media, including declining national audiences as well as modern technology allowing consumers to skip or avoid ads. It is becoming increasingly clear that advertisers need to adapt their media mix to match changing consumer media-consumption habits.

Human attention, as an economic resource, is becoming scarce. As a result there has become a fundamental shift in the way advertisers and agencies buy media. OOHD targets the hard to reach demographic and offers opportunities for media buyers and planners to close the communication gaps that exist in their traditional marketing execution.

OOHD is typically defined as the ‘narrowcasting’ (as opposed to broadcasting) of video content to Plasma and LCD screens in either in-store or captive consumer ‘out of home’ environments. Many companies are beginning to advertise using OOHD and Boost Juice, one of Australia’s fastest growing franchises, is one of them.

Boost Juice commissioned Prime Digital Media (PDM), Australia’s leading provider of out-of-home digital media to develop and manage their OOHD content and enhance their customers experience by entertaining and informing them while waiting for their juice.

Boosting customer experience
Boost Juice stores turn over $100 million annually selling over 18 million juices and smoothies. Situated in major retail precincts and high traffic flow areas in metropolitan and regional sites key brands and products can talk directly to the ‘captive consumer’ whilst they wait for their fresh product to be made each day.

Boost Juice wanted to deliver an exceptional experience to their customers when visiting their stores. PDM developed Boost TV, a channel on the PDM Lifestyle network that consists of portrait oriented LCD and plasma screens at 65 prominent locations nationally. Boost TV displays an engaging mix of relevant, dynamic news and entertainment content interspersed with Boost Juice retailer promotions, and third party advertising.

With an average dwell time of five minutes for each transaction the Boost Juice channel delivers key brands with rich, dynamic digital content to the hard to reach 18-34 year olds on fully networked and live LCD/Plasma screens giving brands the immediacy and cut-through required in today’s fast changing consumer world.

PDM offer an end-to-end solution for Boost Juice from Advertising sales through to content creation and network management.

Capturing the new consumer
Most marketers understand that decreasing product differentiation and shorter product lifespan means it is vital that advertisers create a brand differential to ensure the product is at the forefront of consumers minds when they purchase. Because products are bought everyday, brands need to remind consumers of their name and value everyday.

PDM’s Creative Director, Julie Frikken believes that the Boost TV channel is attractive in delivering messages to a highly targeted and ‘captive’ youth audience, in a rich and compelling way.

“Boost TV targets the new consumer. They are the new breed of active, media- savvy consumer rather than the passive, naive consumer of yesterday.”

New consumerism is an essential ingredient of future influence and no individual can be truly future-influential if they are not acting in ‘new’ ways.

Boost Juice TV targets the new consumer. Their customer is a young, healthy, positive consumer segment, with 85% of the audience between 18-34 years old. The advertising on Boost TV guarantees that the brand messages are reaching an audience with a strong youth skew.

Capturing audiences
Boost TV targets 1,170,000 captive youth consumers every month with a mix of content that can be tailored to suit certain locations and target certain audiences.

“PDM’s media is unique in that it allows marketing ‘surgical strikes’ – messages relevant to a particular environment, location, day of the week and time of the day.”

“In environments with frequent revisits, such as a Boost Juice store, the constant refreshing of content also engages. Mixing advertising content with other forms of ‘infotainment’, such as real-time news and entertainment headlines, also drives impact,” said Ms Frikken.

OOHD captures audiences as they dwell. Screens that simply rotate through a series of static images will quickly disengage the audience, as they operate like traditional signage.

People don’t ‘watch’ OOHD screens like they do a TV, instead they take away high impact snippets of information as they dwell.

“We are all consumers, and we’re living in different times. We’re time poor, we’re mobile, we’re media savvy and we’re much harder to reach. Out-of-Home Digital Media networks bring rich, highly targeted relevant messages to a ‘captive’ consumer – allowing marketers to finish what they start in other media.”

“It’s a natural extension of the marketing mix, and will soon be just another component in every media plan,” said Ms Frikken.

Innovative technology
On Boost Juice TV all the screens are networked and centrally managed by PDM through a sophisticated, web-based media management system which manages large, complex out-of-home digital networks with ease. It allows PDM to analyse and deploy networks, plan, produce content, schedule and traffic content and measure its impact.

The screens provide the ability to adjust messages to fit the local market and to create, publish and measure communication in a way previously unheard of. Via PDM’s centrally managed network, they have the capability to feed relevant content and updates tailored to each store location and time of day.

The content used on Boost TV is updated over a broadband internet connection via PDM’s central trafficking system and averages 98% uptime over a year of 7-day-a-week operation.

Great results
Dynamic out-of-home digital media is now part of Boost Juice’s marketing strategy. The OOHD content that PDM manages has helped raise the profile and awareness of Boost Juice’s new product lines (e.g. Boost Hotties) and in doing so has driven product sales.

The creation of Boost TV has helped deliver cost efficiencies with Boost Juice’s corporate wide area network delivering a series of cost displacement or marketing efficiencies which measurably drive business benefits.

The OOHD content has not only allowed Boost TV to enhance customer experience, it has also allowed for a more efficient means of communicating with a difficult-to-reach youth audience,

As a result of the success of Boost TV, Boost Juice is now working with PDM to expand the size of the network, with plans to install additional panels into stores both in Australia and internationally.

Boost Juice’s adoption of digital signage is just one company that is taking part in the growing trend for retailers to adopt OOHD technologies as they recognise the benefits of this efficient and cost effective medium.

Sydney Public Relations Agency, CP Communications provides specialist media, traditional and online PR strategies that get amazing results. Contact us today. For more PR tips see www.PublicRelationsSydney.com.au

Spread the love