Value vignettes, not case studies.

Value vignettes let you showcase key points of value and shine a light on important themes that longer-form case studies cannot.

Have you ever heard a story that made you kind of fall in love with a company? 

Zaz had bought some shoes from Zappos, and had requested to return her order. However, weeks had gone by and she hadn’t sent the shoes back yet. When the Zappos team emailed to check in on the status of her return, she replied with an update about what was going on for her — she had unexpectedly lost her mom, and her world had been completely upended. 

Sending the shoes back had been completely forgotten in her grief. For most of us, “proactive online shopping returns” is at about the same level in the hierarchy of needs as mailing birthday cards ahead of time to family and friends — not happening when life is chaotic.

The customer service team at Zappos understood. They said “No worries, we got this,” and sent a courier to pick up the shoes and take care of the shipping for her, at no cost. They even sent her flowers and a personal note recognizing her loss. 

Commenting on her experience online, Zaz wrote, “Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving. It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations. Big and lush and fragrant. I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears. I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had happen to me, I don’t know what is.” 

Because of  Zappos’ commitment  “To Live and Deliver WOW,” a simple transaction opened the door for a real human connection — and made an impact that Zaz will never forget. 

Zaz’s story has been shared with tens of millions of people since it was first told 15+ years ago. After hearing this story, people who don’t care at all about shoes, who have never heard about this company before, suddenly want to do business with Zappos.

Stories like these are powerful because they are simple, emotionally evocative, and easy to remember. They’re just about one thing — but they are really about so much more. 

Zappos’s commitment to above and beyond customer service is well-known. In a world where you can buy shoes anywhere online, it’s what makes them stand out. They offer their customers fast,  no-cost  shipping, free 365 day  returns, and friendly 24/7 customer service. 

They tell you all about these things on their website. But this story makes you feel what “WOW” really means for Zappos customers. It connects the dots on how their core differentiator generates amazing results.

Usually, we turn to case studies to help us tell stories of what we’ve done for customers. But have you ever read a case study that made you fall in love with a company? I didn’t think so. 

Nobody really wants to read case studies. Nobody really wants to write them.  

What people do want is to hear and tell stories that help them appreciate the human and meaningful impact that a business makes in people’s lives. And every business has these stories.

Case studies are ineffective in large part because the format sucks. They are long, boring, and impersonal. They put the focus on round numbers that rarely convey the real impact. The stories are so zoomed out they fail to feel unique or special.

The entire point of any case study is to get prospects to go “Damn. I want to do business with people like that.” 

But have you read many (any?!)  case studies that made you feel that? Unlikely.

Audiences aren’t interested in case studies. They want to know how your company does things differently and makes things happen for people like them.

We need to tell the stories of how we’ve made a difference, so that others can imagine what we might do for them.

The Zappos story is effective because it zooms into a compelling story of just one person, at one moment in time. It’s well established from the last three decades of psychology research that short stories about a single individual have a more emotional impact than longer, more complicated ones do.

Our best stories are rarely full-on case studies.

They are the little moments where we’ve done the hard work to solve a challenge on behalf of a customer. Where we’ve gone the extra mile to deliver and delight. Where we’ve come out on top when the odds were against us.

The moments when our difference made a difference.

Instead of trying to think about customer stories from a case study standpoint, think about them from a “value vignette” standpoint.

A vignette is a literary device that brings the audience deeper into a story. Authors use vignettes to quickly zoom in on a particular character, concept, or place, in order to shed light on something that wouldn’t be visible in the larger story’s main plot. You can do the same thing by zooming in on important characters and ideas in your business.

How to use value vignettes in your business

1. Think about the small stories where you and your team have made a difference at a pivotal moment. Start collecting these stories and have your team add to it over time. For each microstory or value vignette, make sure to write down bullet points with the key details of what happened. You can always shape it into a narrative format later on. If you have screenshots of a thank you email, a photo from the customer, even better! 

2. Shape these moments into 200-500 word vignettes that communicate something key that happened at that point in time, that ended up making a real difference in someone’s story. Award-winning lyrical prose is necessary, but you do need to put in the effort to make them feel human and alive.

3. Share these stories with your team, so that they understand the real world impact of what you do each day. Share them with your network in your newsletters and social posts, so they can appreciate how the way you do business generates real, meaningful results. This will help people talk about how you’re different and what you do without needing to recite your positioning statement.

What’s great about this approach is that it’s much more effective and persuasive than a typical case study and it is SO much easier for busy teams to actually do. 

It’s these kinds of stories that create snackable, shareable stories that get people excited and onboard with what your business is all about.

That lets you brag on your wins in a way that connects your impact to your purpose.

That lets you demonstrate the difference that your differentiators really make.

That makes people want to be a part of the stories you are creating — both from a customer and recruiting standpoint. 

This week, start collecting the stories that you tell the most, and are most proud of.

Put them in a doc, and before the end of the year, have someone shape them into little story vignettes. Then share them with your network.

Don’t put this off. It’s totally doable and will be tremendously valuable for your internal comms and your marketing efforts. You’ll be surprised at the level of engagement you’ll see and what responses you’ll get when you do.

When you do create these stories, share them with us. We'd love to read them and share them, too.