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Becca Peel is the Head of Digital PR at Tank.
She and I met at the Digital PR Summit in Manchester, where we talked about this episode’s topic: case studies for journalists and why they matter so much right now in this age of AI uncertainty, when people aren’t always sure who’s real. It’s causing real problems in our space — but also real opportunities for PRs who are good at this.
- AI can gather the data, but it can’t find the human behind it — that’s exactly why journalists are asking for case studies more than ever.
- Start with who you already know — friends, family, colleagues, or the client’s own network are usually the fastest route to a real case study.
- Verify like a journalist would — LinkedIn, a phone call, a real business footprint — because one fake case study can tank your credibility.
- Localize, localize, localize! Don’t just use the same quote everywhere.
- Target journalists who’ve covered people-driven stories before, not just the beat broadly.
- Make sure the case study says something you can’t already Google.
Here’s a slightly edited transcript:
Are Agencies Doing More Case Study Work Now?
Vince Nero: Back when we talked in Manchester, I asked what’s really working right now, and one of the things you mentioned was doing a lot more case study work — providing journalists with human stories, real people tied to your campaigns.
That’s not a new idea, but do you feel agencies are leaning into it more these days, or is Tank unusual in that?
Becca Peel: It’s definitely not new — I’d say it’s the crux of good journalism.
Watch the BBC now versus ten or twenty years ago: journalists have always needed people to help tell the story, to make it human. But I think digital PR got into a habit of loving data and reports so much that we’d send stories out to press without really humanizing them.
So while the need for that hasn’t changed, journalists are asking for it more — I think because they want exclusivity, something you’re not offering everyone else, and because newsrooms are more time-poor than ever.
There are fewer journalists, and yes, they can use AI to help write a story, but AI can’t find them a real person the story applies to.
A good example: we ran a survey a few weeks ago for a development company about how AI is affecting designers in the US. A couple of publications, including TechRadar — one of the client’s top-tier targets — came back to us, and the journalist said, essentially, “This is great, but we need a case study. We need someone this research actually applies to.”
We’d normally just include a quote from the client, but they wanted to hear from the people the research was actually about.
So even though AI can help with the data gathering and analysis side, that just frees up more time to go find the people journalists actually want to talk to.
Isn’t Finding Case Studies the Journalist’s Job?
Vince Nero: That makes total sense — and it seems so obvious once you say it. I wonder why more people don’t do it.
I’ve talked to others who’ve pushed back and said, “Isn’t that the journalist’s job?”
Becca Peel: I get that argument — journalists have always sourced their own case studies or quotes, from councils or elsewhere, when we send them a story.
But it’s also their job to find a story, and if we’re the ones providing it, I don’t see the issue with them asking us to help substantiate it.
It happens the other way too.
The BBC once had a case study of someone whose dog had an allergic reaction because a product’s labeling was wrong, and they needed someone to comment on inaccurate labeling.
We happened to have a client in that space, so we got them into the BBC.
I think it comes down to making sure digital PR is doing right by the brand — and honestly, I think digital PR and traditional PR are becoming the same thing at this point.
Vince Nero: I like that — it lets you control more of the narrative and keep the messaging unified if you’ve got your own case study lined up. And journalists are so stretched that if you can hand them almost everything they need — that was one of the first things I learned in this industry — you’re helping your own case too.
How Do You Actually Find Case Studies?
Vince Nero: So how do you actually find these people? You don’t have to give away all your secret sauce, but —
Becca Peel: I wish I had just one secret source!
There are so many ways to do this.
The first place we look is our own friends and family, or people at the agency.
For example: we ran a campaign on how much it’s actually costing pub owners and landlords to pour a pint, versus what people assume they’re pocketing when they raise prices to £6.50 or £7.
The data showed they’re barely making anything on it — but to humanize that, one of my team members had a friend who’s a landlord, so we went straight to him.
We’ll also ask around the agency, even people outside our own team, since it’s good for their profile too.
Beyond that: Twitter, and ResponseSource, which a lot of journalists use to source quotes — we respond to those requests, but we also use it to find case studies by working with other companies’ PRs.
Sometimes it’s through the client directly. For a “save the bees” campaign, we researched where bees are struggling most in the UK, and it turned out our client knew a beekeeper with her own farm — a perfect case study.
I’ve even been a case study myself once, for a campaign that wasn’t even ours — I saw a request and thought, “that’s me, I can help.”
And sometimes you have to get resourceful: cold-emailing businesses that fit the criteria if you don’t already know anyone.
Vince Nero: So you’re putting on your journalist hat.
Becca Peel: Exactly — you’re doing a bit of journalism yourself.
It takes time, but it’s actually fun, and you end up with a story nobody else can tell, because you’ve got that insight and access. Start with people you know, or even yourself. For a campaign about ADHD and neurodiversity tax on spending, we knew someone at the agency who’s open about having ADHD, so they became the case study.
It really is about who you know, who the client knows, and then putting on that journalist hat.
Vince Nero: I love that AI can take over the parts it’s good at, so you can spend your time on the part it can’t do.
Is There Such a Thing as a Bad Case Study?
Vince Nero: Do you think there’s such a thing as a bad case study? How do you gauge whether something’s going to resonate — is it about gathering multiple sources, or is one strong person enough?
Becca Peel: With everything going on right now — people literally inventing fake case studies, which still blows my mind — you have to be able to substantiate that the person is real.
Photos help.
Being able to actually talk to the person on the phone helps even more, or seeing they’re linked to a real business.
It’s about doing your due diligence to make sure what they’re saying is true, and that it still fits the brand you’re representing.
You wouldn’t want a case study from a competitor, or someone whose messaging clashes with the client’s. It comes back to doing PR properly — the way journalists would expect.
Do You Steer the Case Study Toward the Story You Want?
Vince Nero: Right — like with the beekeeper example, you’re probably going in with an idea of what you want them to say.
Do you draft questions ahead of time to steer toward the story?
Becca Peel: That’s a good point.
If we built a campaign around data saying one thing and a case study then contradicted it, that would be a problem — thankfully that hasn’t happened yet, hopefully because our campaigns are solid to begin with. We do draft questions in advance, sometimes hop on a call like this one to save everyone time, and we always run the final piece by them before publishing.
If someone’s answer genuinely didn’t match the data, we’d have to go back and look at the data again, or just use a different part of the quote.
It’s a fair concern, but we’re not manipulating the story — we’re finding someone whose real experience matches an outcome we’ve already found in the data.
If our survey shows designers are worried about AI taking their jobs, we go find a designer who’s genuinely grappling with that. We’re not putting words in anyone’s mouth, just finding someone whose story fits.
Vince Nero: Right — you’re not just asking a random designer what they think; you’re finding someone who’s actually been affected.
I think that’s what gives a case study its emotional angle, or doubles down on whatever emotion the data already points to.
Becca Peel: Exactly — and it works. When we ran the pub landlord story, the version with the case study as the headline was the one that got picked up and shared, and it got thousands of interactions on social media — way more than the other angles from the same campaign. People relate to people.
Is This Common Outside the UK?
Vince Nero: Is this a US thing too, or mostly UK?
Becca Peel: It’s pretty universal at this point. We work with a food intolerance company in the US, and we get a lot of requests there too — people who’ve experienced celiac disease or other intolerances, on top of an expert quote from the client.
I’ve been doing this about ten years, and I’ve never had journalists ask for case studies as often as they do now.
Newsrooms are stretched thin and need to make sure people are actually reading their stories, so they need that human angle, and something exclusive.
We usually offer the case study as an exclusive first, then work a version of the quote into the wider release.
In the US especially, there’s a strong appetite for it around broadcast and local news — outlets won’t always interview the person on camera, but they’ll use their photo and tell the story through local news sites.
Vince Nero: That tracks — local news is still a big deal here, even as it shrinks.
I’ve talked to producers who say you need people ready to go.
I’ve had a guest on this podcast whose phone started ringing mid-interview because a local station wanted him to comment on something, just because he’d become a go-to voice.
How Do You Verify a Case Study Is Real?
Vince Nero: Given all the fake case studies floating around right now — like the “Royal Cleaner” story, which I think started with a UK outlet, though I won’t point fingers without being sure — how do you verify someone before you put them forward?
Becca Peel: Beyond talking to them directly, you want to see they’ve got a real footprint: a website if relevant, a Google listing for their business, LinkedIn, contactable information.
Our beekeeper, for instance, had already been on the news herself, so we knew she was real.
That said, I’ve seen investigations into fake “experts” who even had fabricated LinkedIn profiles, which is wild.
I always try to get on a call with case studies myself. And increasingly, journalists are asking to speak directly to our expert spokespeople too — not just the case study — and asking for quotes to come straight from them, which we obviously coordinate, but it’s another trust signal for the journalist.
Basically: check every box you can. Do they have LinkedIn? Have you spoken to them on the phone?
Do they have a real location listed on Google? A website? Have they appeared in the media before? A lot of people who respond to our ResponseSource call-outs have been in the press before, which helps verify them too.
And any other trust signal helps — we had a small-business case study who’d appeared on Dragons’ Den, and another who’d been on The Apprentice.
You don’t need a huge trust signal like that, but it helps both with coverage and with verification.
Vince Nero: That’s a great point — back when I did more of this myself, part of the reason to line up expert commentary strategically was SEO: if you found someone with a high-authority blog or a strong social following, there was a good chance they’d link back to the piece or share it.
Becca Peel: That’s a great point too.
Vince Nero: So it seems like the same checks you’re doing for authenticity also tend to double as strengths — if they’ve got a blog, they might link to it; if they’ve got a following, they might share it. Verifying someone properly ends up paying off twice.
Becca Peel: Exactly. I can’t think of anything worse than accidentally putting out a fake comment. It’s wild that this is even something we have to think about now.
Do You Include a Case Study in Every Pitch?
Vince Nero: Do you include a case study proactively in every pitch?
Becca Peel: I’d say eight times out of ten.
For reactive work — say, a fast-turnaround story like a new Prime Minister being announced — we usually won’t have time to line one up unless a journalist specifically asks. But for planned campaigns, yes: bringing a case study along gives us an extra layer to go out with, and it means every release can include that quote.
It takes more planning up front — thinking early about who we know, who the client knows, or who someone else might know — but it’s worth it.
Vince Nero: That could easily be the thing that makes a pitch stand out.
Do You Tailor the Case Study for Different Outlets?
Vince Nero: Do you use the same case study for every outlet, or tailor it?
Becca Peel: We tailor it. For a typical campaign we’ll have six or seven different press releases.
There’s the overarching national release built around the top-line stats, which might include a short quote from the case study.
Then we’ll write standalone releases built entirely around the case study — for the beekeeper campaign, for example, a release headlined around her warning about Asian hornets, which apparently eat dozens of bees a day and are a real threat to hives (I hadn’t known about that until she mentioned it).
For the pub story, it was a landlord calling on the government to act, tied back into our data.
We’ll also localize it — the pub landlord release went out nationally with a quote, but we also built a separate, hyper-local release for their specific town.
If it had come from the client instead, it would still land, but the client isn’t the one living the situation — the case study is.
Vince Nero: Right — as a journalist, you’d probably lead a human-interest piece with the person, and bring in the data to support it, rather than the other way around.
Do You Prefer Leading With Data or the Case Study?
Becca Peel: Exactly. I studied journalism at university, so I’m biased toward leading with the case study, though for mass coverage, leading with data still works.
But it’s shifting — there’s so much data out there that says nothing on its own.
I think that’s a real risk in digital PR: analyzing a pile of data and going out with a story that doesn’t actually say anything.
You have to find the story in the numbers first.
Vince Nero: I’ve seen that too — cases where the data was solid, but what actually landed the coverage was the human impact of it.
How Do You Choose Which Journalists to Target?
Vince Nero: Let’s talk about the media list side. Are there particular signals you look for in a journalist?
Becca Peel: People keep bringing up your Digital PR Summit talk about making sure you’re targeting the right journalists — not just someone who covers “sports” broadly, but someone who specifically covers, say, cricket, and covers it from an angle that fits your story rather than sports politics or something unrelated.
Journalists who cover people-driven stories tend to be a bit easier to spot.
One of my first-ever case study pitches was for an NHS discount card company: we found two women who’d met working as paramedics and fallen in love, and tied it to Valentine’s Day.
We sent it as an exclusive on a Friday morning, to journalists I’d spent the morning identifying — checking the Daily Mirror, The Sun, The Guardian for journalists who’d written that kind of first-person story before; sometimes you can even see it in their quotes or headlines. Almost every journalist we sent it to said yes, because people like people.
The same logic applies to any media list: research who’s covered similar first-person stories before, and target accordingly. I wouldn’t send a beekeeper story to a music publication.
Vince Nero: That maps to your talk — you’re finding the people who’ve clearly done human-interest stories first, and then a second wave for the data-focused angle.
Becca Peel: Right — and once a case study quote is out there in a bigger story, it’s essentially spent.
I had a journalist at The Guardian tell me a case study we’d pitched might make the weekend edition, then come back a few hours later to say someone else had already covered it, so they couldn’t.
Frustrating, but it’s pushed us to prioritize whoever we’re closest to publishing next: they don’t need a case study locked as an exclusive forever, but they do need to be first. As we build relationships, we log strong responses into our tier-one media lists — I won’t pitch the same journalist every time, but I’m also not turning down The Guardian three times in a row.
Vince Nero: That relationship-building matters — it’s not only about the coverage on any single pitch.
Becca Peel: Exactly — they’ll come back to you too. We have a journalist at Ideal Home who comes back to us every single month now for quotes from one of our flower clients.
Any Final Advice?
Vince Nero: Becca, anything we didn’t cover that you’d want to leave people with?
Becca Peel: Just: make sure you’re saying something new.
There’s a journalist, Rob Waugh from Press Gazette, who said something that stuck with me — if you can Google it and it’s already out there, it shouldn’t be in the story.
That applies just as much to case studies. You can’t dictate what someone says, but you can ask questions that help them say something genuinely new.
And if they have a real USP — they’ve been on Dragons’ Den, they’ve won an award, they keep bees, they run their own farm — lean into it.
It helps you cut through, and it helps verification too. A generic case study from just anyone won’t cut through with journalists who are this stretched for time.
Vince Nero: Rob actually said that same line on this podcast — maybe that’s where you picked it up, or maybe it’s just his catchphrase. Either way, great advice.
I think the bigger theme here is putting yourself in the journalist’s shoes. With a journalism background, that probably comes more naturally to you — the rest of us learn it the hard way, through a lot of rejected pitches.
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