How to read a PR case study critically

Start with one question: would this coverage have happened without the agency? A case study is written by the seller, about its best client, in its best quarter, and a funded, fast-growing company gets written about with or without help. The only claim worth verifying is the marginal one: coverage the client's own momentum would not have produced.

A logo wall proves the client was newsworthy. GitLab was going to IPO whether or not anyone pitched the story; DocSend was getting acquired by Dropbox either way. When a case study opens with WSJ and TechCrunch logos, your first job is to estimate how much of that was the company's own gravity.

Six questions strip a case study down to what is attributable:

• Starting point - what was the client before the engagement? A Series B company in a hot category is not a fair test of agency skill.
• Timing - did the coverage track a funding round or launch the agency had nothing to do with? News events carry most startup stories, and reporters now treat plain funding news as commodity content, so a large round or a marquee investor draws coverage on its own gravity.
• Units - placements, or "impressions" and "reach"? Impressions are arithmetic on someone else's audience and prove almost nothing. Ask for named outlets and dated articles.
• The marginal win - which specific placement exists only because of the work? A good agency can name it without hesitating.
• Survivorship - you are seeing the engagement that worked. Ask about one that didn't, and what the difference was.
• What the client supplied - the story, the data, the spokesperson. No agency manufactures a story the client doesn't have, so a glowing case study may mostly prove the client had great raw material.

What a real, attributable win looks like: Dr. Squatch went from a Kickstarter brand to a Super Bowl spot on sustained outreach against a genuine story, worked over quarters. Honest case studies tend to read this way, unglamorous and slow, with checkable placements accumulating along the path.

The strongest signal in any case study is a named reference you can actually call. Running that call well is its own discipline, covered in the checking-references page. The six questions above also double as a script for the meeting itself; the pitch-questions page covers what else to ask in the room.