Posted: December 13th, 2007 | Author: Duncan Brown | Filed under: analyst relations | Tags: analyst relations, analysts, Carter Lusher | 2 Comments »
You may have heard that Carter, who ran AR at HP in the US, departed HP recently. He emailed me yesterday to point out his new role, heading up a reborn SageCircle AR firm. I read Carter’s blog while he was at HP, so his SageCircle Blog should be similarly stimulating. Good luck on the new gig, Carter.
Interestingly, the blog site names this blog as an AR blog, not the first time I’ve been pigeonholed as such. Lord help anyone visiting here expecting advice on how to run an AR practice. Read this post from Skip, then come back and see analysts in the holistic context of influencer ecosystems…
I also note that SageCircle blogs cite (what I guess are) SageCircle’s competitors - ASG, KCG, Lighthouse, Tiger Lily, etc. Good on you, SageCircle. It’s a small market and the more informed the target audience the better for all. Grow the pie, as they say.
It’s also good influencing strategy, as your competitors are usually influencing your audience. Engage with them, arther than ignore them. It nearly always has benefits.
Posted: October 29th, 2007 | Author: Duncan Brown | Filed under: analyst relations, influence, influencer relations | Tags: Analyst Influence Is Diminishing, analyst relations, Carter Lusher, influencer relations, Skip MacAskill | 4 Comments »
Carter Lusher and Skip MacAskill two long-standing Analyst relations professionals, both ex-Gartner, now heading up AR at HP and Cisco respectively. I recently linked to Carter’s post on influence here.
Skip’s recent post on influence is important because he states a belief that “the traditional business models that analyst firms have employed for years will become less relevant within the next three to five years.”
He also thinks that the “traditional” firms won’t disappear completely, but they will be hard pressed by emerging information delivery models and processes – along with a new breed of alternative influencers – that are fast-moving and in-the moment.
Finally, Skip believes that “that the number of users that buy a product or invest in a technology off the back of a traditional Gartner, Forrester or Yankee report will significantly decrease over the next five years.”
These are important comments from the AR perspective, notably so because AR stands to lose as much as analyst firms. As Skip notes, “I don’t welcome that development with any type of mirth or glee – as an Analyst Relations guy, I’m quite interested in things like job security and my function’s own continued relevance – but I definitely sense a shift in the air.”
I think that the way forward for AR is for it to broaden out into a wider understanding of where influence is actually applied, beyond analysts to encompass consultants, academics, bloggers, procurement bodies, financial authorities, regulators, government agencies, consumer groups, and the rest of the influencer community.
The difficulty is, most vendors have no idea who really influences their customers and prospects, and wouldn’t have anything to say to them if they did know. That’s why I wrote a white paper on the subject a year ago, to shake vendors out of the “Analysts equal influence” mindset. It is still pertinent today.
The question for AR now is, do you take note of what senior AR pros are saying on the shake up of influence and act on it? Or ignore it and hope for the best?
Posted: October 16th, 2007 | Author: Duncan Brown | Filed under: analysts, blogging, influence, social media | Tags: analysts, blogging, Carter Lusher, case studies, influence, influencer engagement, Influencer Marketing - the book, James Governor, Richard Holway, social media | 4 Comments »
Carter Lusher, AR head at HP and ex-Gartner analyst, posts on the use of social media by analyst firms (synopsis: not enough) and wonders on the impact of blogging on influence from analysts. Great issues.
The current position, as I see it, is that bloggers have relatively little influence on CIO-level execs and business folk. They do, however, have influence in the more techie arenas. Big generalisations, of course, but it seems to hold for most markets, and makes a reasonable starting hypothesis. Demographics are also an important feature of socila media’s reach (but this may be changing: if The Archers are podcasting, anyone can…). Country differences also exist (e.g. France is generally more blog-friendly…).
It’s important to recognise that bloggers are often influential because of their “day job” and just happen to blog nowadays. Richard Holway is a good example. Blogging is a means of access, and it allows previously inaccessible people to gain exposure. So you find DBAs and developers emerging as influential bloggers - their influence is expanded out to the web, beyond the confines of their employers.
In researching case studies for the book, I discovered that blogging and other social media need to be dedicated activities, with time and budget allocated. Otherwise it’s just dabbling, as Carter points out in IDC’s approach.
The key question is always, influential on whom? If analysts are trying to influence CIOs then there is no immediate need to blog, because CIOs generally don’t read them. James Governor is successful because he aims at the more techie audience, and is thus more influential on that audience.
The trick, then, is to monitor blog readership closely, and to respond when the sitation changes.
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