Case Studies’ Fine Line

“We have amazing Flash developers but we don’t have the depth of Flex experience we needed. What’s different about Universal Mind is that they build truly enterprise class Flex applications in a tight timeframe.”

--JibJab Co-Founder Gregg Spiridellis

In customer case studies the idea is to make you look good without making your customer look bad. Messages like “our customer was a mess until we showed up and fixed everything” don’t work on a whole bunch of levels.

That’s especially true in B2B marketing where success may come from partnerships between companies highly skilled in closely aligned but not identical competencies.

Take this case study for Universal Mind, an expert in rich Internet application development -- and JibJab, the well-known entertainment brand famous for its political parodies. Both companies have a lot of knowledge when it comes to deploying highly interactive experiences in Adobe Flash. Although each firm has “amazing Flash developers,” JibJab tapped Universal Mind for UM's more specialized expertise in developing enterprise applications that employ Flash.

The key in making the case for Universal Mind without undermining JibJab is to clearly delineate the roles of the partners, not simply trumpet Universal Mind’s technical skills. That’s a much more strategic sell and it actually helps push the technical message as well.

You can read the case here.

You can also see some of my other web writing for Universal Mind here.