While I admire you fighting for case studies that encompass all of these things, I think that the harsh reality is that you'll probably never really see one. The reason being that once a company or agency has “figured it out” and done a campaign well on Twitter (or elsewhere), they certainly don't want to expose that success to competitors. Even if it's something that very easily could be duplicated with very little effort and resources, management would always pull back rather than be 100% transparent. The pros don't outweigh the cons, at least not usually.

Sure you can share details about what you're doing and how you're doing it, but you'll never “give the keys to the car” so to speak. I think that sometimes we would all be better off and it would actually foster MORE great ideas, but I can't see that changing. No matter what the purpose of the case study, it seems obvious that there will always be something important left out for competitive or proprietary reasons.

Sad, but true. Nice post.

Honestly? I think those that view case studies as sales pitches are incorrect. Yes, you can use case studies to drive sales leads – and you should. But the crafting and presenting of information shouldn't be focused on that. The information will sell itself – the sale will happen with how the salesperson actually presents it.

Unfortunately, many keep case studies internal as to not leak secrets and approaches. However, you can use selective transparency to showcase instead of the opposite.

I wonder if a strategy section more in depth is needed.