A case study gone wrong: Vessi’s $100M marketing strategy
I recently shared how to write sales content that hypnotizes readers into wanting to buy. A well-written case study, when done right, has the potential for significant financial persuasion. But with great power comes great responsibility, and a poorly-written case study can also backfire—especially if it goes viral for all the wrong reasons.
This week on X/Twitter, Tony Yu shared an Instgram ad featuring his company, Vessi, highlighting case study claims so extravagant, they were irresponsible and not believable. It was a highly-visible back-and-forth debate between Tony and Noah Curran, CEO of Monkedia, who wrote (and later unpublished) the case study.
The ad is on the left, the DM chat is on the right.
More than half a million people saw this public back-and-forth go down, many criticizing Monkedia for positioning itself as responsible for Vessi’s growth from startup to $100M. I managed to grab a screenshot of what went wrong:
Here’s the offending text:
The creative strategy implemented by Monkedia helped lay the foundation for this startup’s explosive growth, with ad spend scaling 580% over the first five months as ROAS nearly tripled over that same time period. The result? Just 5 years later, Vessi is bringing in $100M in annual revenue.
Let’s take a look at why this case study went sideways and how I would have approached it.
3 components of a good case study
Before we dive in, I want to clarify what makes a good case study:
A provable, causal relationship between usage of a product/service and a compelling result
A believable and realistic story arc from challenge to solution
It’s about the success of the user of the product/service, not the provider
The best case studies make you think: “I have the same problems as this company. If I buy the same product, I will be successful like them.” It’s a business psyop.
So, with those things in mind, let’s see where the Monkedia case study went sideways.
Never claim ownership for results you didn’t produce
The big issue with the Monkedia case study is they’re claiming ownership over the hard-earned revenue gains that occurred five years after the strategy was put in place. Five years is a long time. Unless Monkedia detailed five years of planning, tweaking, and hands-on work in their case study (which they didn’t), they can’t say: “We produced a strategy and then five years later, our client was making $100M/yr.”
Did they produce strong results? Yes. Tripling ROAS in five months is a big deal! But did a single strategy drive revenue from “nothing” to $100M in five years? No way.
Getting to $100M requires more than a strategy. I worked at a startup that went from ~$40M to $100M in just a couple of years. It was ridiculous growth. And a lot of hard work. And a LOT of pivoting, product tweaks, personnel changes, etc. There was no strategy other than “do everything that helps us grow.” It was madness. There’s no way on earth that a marketing strategy could have gotten us there. Of course, that’s just one data point, but we didn’t have physical product like Vessi.
Beyond that, it’s a stretch to claim that any one strategy could help a company get to 9-figure revenue in five years. It’s simply not believable.
And based on Tony Yu’s feedback, it is not to be believed because it simply isn’t true.
The difference between facts and “facts”
I won’t get into the back-and-forth drama between Tony and Noah about the facts of the case study and Monkedia’s actual influence on Vessi’s growth. Instead, I’d like to focus on why people (particularly: agencies) write case studies in the first place.
Case studies prove that you made a difference for your customers. It’s a feather in your cap that you want to share with prospects so they want to buy from you, too. If you can show off what you’ve done for a big-name brand, you’re in good shape for your sales process.
As an agency owner myself, I’d love to make outrageous claims about the work we’ve done for our customers. But the reality is that it’s very difficult to attribute my work to my clients’ successes. Even if they tell me, “We got Blackrock as a customer because of your white paper,” which is something I’ve actually been told, it’s hard for me to say it was the paper that did the trick. It was the hard work of the sales team and the email strategy and the relationship-building… I played a small part in making that deal happen.
If I were to write a case study about how I helped a client get a deal with Blackrock, I’d want to get a quote from them directly and I’d need to write an entire story about whole the whole deal hinged on a case study (which it didn’t). But, that’s how I’d write a case study about it.
On X/Twitter, Noah kept rebuffing critical feedback saying all the facts and data in the case study were accurate. This is as un-serious as Michael Moore infamously saying, “I make sure that all of the facts in my movie are absolutely 100 percent true.” Well, of course all the facts in your movie are true! It’s not the facts we’re worried about but the narrative.
When you write a case study, you need to know the difference between a fact and a supposition. If the facts aren’t enough to be convincing, then your case study is going to have to stretch the reader’s imagination, which is tricky to do.
Our process for writing trustworthy case studies
My team and I have a pretty lengthy process for writing case studies so they are fact-based, engaging, persuasive, and a content asset that everyone can be proud of. Here’s what we do:
Pre-interview research: Write out everything we know about the client, their business, and their usage of the products in question
Know the story we want the client to tell in the interview
Interview the client: Our interviews are easy-going so the client feels comfortable and has nothing to worry about (NDA violations, etc.). We don’t leave the interview without making sure we’ve collected all the information we need to tell the story. Don’t forget to get some quotes from the client!
Transcribe the interview and highlight the important parts of the interview: Interviews always uncover information you didn’t expect, so we sift through and look for new information and useful quotes
Build an outline and review it: Outlining is a great way to make sure the story is going to be everything we need
Write a draft and social media content, get it reviewed by everyone
Get client approval on the content and the release date: This is a great opportunity to get the client excited about the case study so they want to share it and increase distribution/exposure
Release the case study as promised
Writing a good case study requires a lot of behind-the-scenes work and coordination. We love writing case studies that our customers (and theirs!) are proud to share.
Clearly, this Monkedia case study was not one that Vessi was proud to share and now it’s offline. The reputational damage to the company is non-trivial, with some pretty serious names in the marketing industry sharing this post. Not all attention is good attention.
