Are the Worst Case Study Clichés Finally Fading Out?

When it first launched, Peter Ampe gave a presentation about his new book, ‘From Cold Case to Gold Case’, to a collection of Belgian creative agencies. It was a moment for the Brussels creative community to come together and share their frustrations about the chokehold that certain case study tropes had on the industry. 

It turned out that everyone present had bigger issues on the horizon. The next day, the entire population of Belgium was told to stay at home to prevent the spread of a deadly virus. It was the last public advertising event of 2020 for everyone present.

Peter’s book – a manual for anyone tasked with putting a case study film together for advertising award entries – just happened to come out in the year that shows like Cannes Lions and D&AD were cancelled. “It was the most difficult year in terms of challenges,” laughs the author and chief creative officer of AKQA Brussels. “If we were to make a case film about the book, the first challenge would be launching it during a time with no award shows.”

However, almost five years on, the book has made an impact. For a start, it’s changed Peter’s career. “For me, it’s been a personal struggle to make case films,” he says. (It was never his favourite part of a project). “You have a great idea, a great campaign, and then someone says, ‘Maybe we should think about making a case film’. That’s when creatives start to panic.”

Creatives aren’t always best suited to this task, he’d found. And it seems the industry agreed. “A lot of people have contacted me to say they read the book and that it really helped them to structure their case films and keep them engaging until the very end. Everyone can handle the first 30 seconds of a case film, but it’s the next 90 seconds where people struggle. That’s where the book comes in – helping them maintain momentum and tell the story effectively.”

Ultimately, the book aims to make sure that deserving creative ideas have the chance to put their best foot forward at awards shows. And ‘From Cold Case to Gold Case’ seems to have really done that. Peter says that Laurence O'Byrne, creative director at Irish independent agency Boys + Girls, shared that he used principles from the book to make sure the case film for ‘The Island’ for telco Three did the project justice. It went on to win a Gold and a Bronze Lion in 2021.

“The case was on the same level as the idea itself, which is really important,” says Peter, noting that there’s only so much turd polish that the industry can afford. “You can’t turn a bad idea into something great with a case film.”

Competing agencies often tell Peter that they followed his book’s advice and it helped. “I don’t mind, because for me, it’s all about ensuring ideas are judged fairly – not case films,” he says. “I want every case film to be at the same level so we can focus on judging the ideas again, rather than being influenced by bad case films.”

We all know the sort of case films he means. And jury members’ love for creativity dies a little bit each time they see them (along with the chances of that idea to earn itself any accolade).

Since 2020, things have changed. Peter can think of a few ways that he’d tweak the book if he were to publish a new edition today. For example, while he originally wrote that a good way to start with a case film is to imagine the film poster about it, now he might suggest thinking about a YouTube thumbnail. After all,case films have evolved. “A lot of them now take more time to connect viewers with the idea or the audience’s reaction to it, which is a great evolution,” says Peter. 

Looking back, case films from years ago were often three minutes long, or even longer. When award shows introduced a two-minute limit because judges were reviewing until four in the morning, agencies suddenly had to cram everything into two minutes, which led to “frantic voiceovers trying to include every detail,” he explains. “But now, I see a trend where people take more time to tell the story while still respecting the two-minute limit. A lot of ideas focus on behaviour change, which means the editing and storytelling are slower, and I applaud that.”

He’s also noted the domination of the voiceover diminishing. Other styles are emerging, whether taking a typographical route or using a spokesperson to narrate the story of an idea. “When you use spokespeople, it can feel more like the style of social media creators. I think we’ll see more and more of this – people borrowing formats that are trending on social media,” he adds. “Right now, we’re copying genres like documentaries, human interest programmes, or social experiments for our storytelling. But in the future, we’ll have new formats to copy as trends evolve.”

Music has changed for the better in that time too. “No sad pianos, no ukuleles – we’ve gotten rid of both. That’s definitely progress. We’ve also moved past cliché phrases like, ‘But we didn’t stop there’ or ‘But most importantly’. Sometimes I’d think, ‘I wish you had stopped there!’. These phrases kill a case film – they make it feel lazy.”

The same goes for results. Peter has been a member of the European Effie jury for two years now and admits it’s allowed him to become much more result-savvy. “Creatives are also getting better at understanding results. We don’t fall for meaningless numbers anymore. For example, impressions aren’t results – they don’t count.”

Numbers without context are out. “Creatives now know we need percentages with benchmarks,” continues Peter, adding that we’re doing away with claims of billions of impressions (“Sometimes even more than the population of Earth,” he chuckles). Juries today see how ridiculous that era was.

It’s worth noting, however, that 2020 was before the dawn of gen AI, which Peter admits has yet to make its mark fully on the format. “We’ll probably see more of that this year,” he predicts. But the CCO is just happy that his handbook for the case film is still being put to use. “It’s still valid, even though there have been some evolutions.”