I've been writing a bit of process documentation recently and thinking through different ways to approach assignments. There's something I used to say all the time, but couldn't get to catch on with my peers. Then I heard it from somebody I really respect a few days ago and it's been bouncing around my head ever since: "What's the case study going to look like?"

It's worth considering early in development of an idea. If you look into the future at project completion, when you have delivered, and the campaign been exposed to an audience, what will you have accomplished? What will you learn? What will you do next? 

Whether you use 'think it through' or "put it on the 't' axis" (©… no I'm not kidding) or any number of other cliche sayings, in marketing we often focus on how cool an idea is, equate that to the number of people who are going to love it and we call that success.

Assuming the idea goes off as planned, those spikes in interest or audience behavior are indicators of a successful marketing program, but real success in consumer communications is a sustained growth in awareness or warming of sentiment, rhythmically punctuated by those spikes that generate frenzied action. And in those moments of high interest, when your audience says saying "You're great, what's next?" wouldn't it be awesome to already know the answer?