Advertising and Marketing Case Analysis Skills

Looking at external cases is a basic skill for marketers, and is also an external stimulus for daily inspiration and thinking. In fact, every case has content that can be explored in depth, but most marketers do not know how to look at cases.

First of all, it is difficult to directly solve your marketing problems by looking at cases.

Because each case has unique background conditions, no marketing case in the world can be perfectly replicated. However, this cannot be said absolutely because there are information gaps between different industries and regions. Some marketing techniques can indeed be directly copied and transplanted after slight improvements, but some creative content is basically impossible to replicate.

Secondly, when looking at cases, don’t just focus on successful cases.

There are accidental factors behind every extremely successful case. If you only focus on successful cases and then review the elements of successful cases, it is easy to attribute marketing to accidental factors, which can easily go astray. If you look at more ordinary cases and failed cases, you will discover the commonalities of marketing and grasp the core key of marketing. In fact, only looking at successful cases is a very lazy approach.

Friends who have visited several industry websites should know that a large number of marketing cases posted on the websites are very boring, and many of the contents are pure public relations. They are so boring that you may even regard them as negative cases. I have also observed some industry award cases. In fact, there are not many that can really impress the public. This is mainly because marketing theories and marketing strategies are things that are updated and iterated very slowly, so there are only a few routines, and they lose their novelty after seeing too many of them.

When faced with such mediocre cases, you need to change your mindset - when analyzing a case, you should not look at what it did well, but why it was not done well enough and what the reasons behind it are. Analyzing cases from this perspective will yield some unexpected results. You may even find that these mediocre cases are excellent or more valuable to learn from...

We often come across cases where the project team feels they have done a very good job, but whether from the award application materials or public relations communication, these projects seem too routine. The reason for this is probably that the difficulties and highlights of the projects lie in the specific implementation details and communication and coordination, and this part of the content is difficult to express through case descriptions, which will cause a disadvantage in the outside world's evaluation of the case.

For example, it is not uncommon for an Internet company to engage in some social fission, private domain traffic and other gameplay. However, for a traditional company, they are facing a process of digital transformation. The promotion of private domain traffic gameplay is very difficult and requires convincing many management levels of the company. The establishment of a private domain gameplay system will also have a certain impact and adjustment on the existing organizational structure. It is actually a big deal and requires overcoming many obstacles during the implementation process.

If you just look at the case presentation intuitively, you will feel that this company's private domain marketing system is mediocre, and it uses things that have been popular in the market for a long time or are left over. But this idea is superficial. If you are in this project team, you can understand its difficulty. What this case reflects is the pain points of the digital transformation of the entire traditional industry. If you dig deeper, you can actually discover the various difficulties and problems of the company and the industry. Of course, this also requires you to break out of the narrow marketing perspective and use a more macro framework to do case analysis.

So, if you only focus on some marketing strategies or creative highlights when looking at a case, it is actually far from enough and also lazy. Under the surface of a case, there is a lot of valuable information that can be explored, but most people are not willing to dig deep or think about it.

That’s why I say that mediocre and failed cases are sometimes more valuable to study than excellent cases. Of course, if you study the cases according to the logic of breaking them down layer by layer above, you actually need to invest some energy.

If we regard the case as a solution to a marketing problem, we can actually assume that each case that is finally released is the "optimal solution" under the constraints, and then we can reversely infer the problem through this "optimal solution" answer.

In other words, analyzing and disassembling cases is a process of finding problems, not a process of finding answers.

For example, if you think the creativity of this case is mediocre, then why does it lack creative highlights? Is the resistance due to compromises due to too many project decision makers, or is it due to limitations in the industry’s tone and gameplay, or is there some other reason? So how do these factors need to be addressed in your company in the future? In short, never think that others are stupid and can't come up with some good ideas like you do. But the more newbies you are, the more likely you are to think so. In fact, it is because you have not thought about it seriously, or your way of thinking is wrong.

This way of thinking, which treats real-life events as the "optimal solution" and works backwards, can also save you a lot of confusion. For example, when you think a movie is poorly made but has good box office, you don't have to blame the director for having no talent. Just know that this movie is the best work under various environmental constraints. The director may not be incapable of making a good movie, but he just balanced various factors and finally presented such a movie.

In fact, a large number of marketing personnel I have come into contact with are just skimming the surface when breaking down and analyzing cases, summarizing some routine points, but not analyzing anything substantive, and their true colors will be exposed if they are asked a few more questions. So, don’t think that it’s easy to look at a case. In fact, there are a lot of things that can be explored in depth behind it, but most people cannot dig out the value of these things.

Author: Spread Gymnastics

Source: Spread Gymnastics ha)