Let’s say an analyst firm is asked to give a quote about marketshare/leadership in the blood glucose market space…for the quote to have any real value, it would have to have some sort of quantitative/qualitative information…which is the main value marker of a research study (the hard numbers and figures)…you can take the hard numbers out of any study and it’s practically worthless…my point is, what many people ask for is the same figures the analyust firm is trying to sell.

If you give those facts away for free, the analyst will be out of a job.

Unless you are asking for a generic quote that won’t really make or break your press release, you should expect to compensate the analyst in some way. The other option is to go to an unknown analyst who will give a free quote cause they need to brand their name…but again, how much is that really worth????

At the end of a week when we’ve driven an interesting discussion about how vendors use, and pay for, canned industry analyst quotes, comes this rather sweet missive from CA, which turns the discussion on its head. “CA is honored tha…

1. Some quotes are so bad, too generic or “feel” questionable that you may loose credibility without even getting paid.

2. Make sure it is more than just a soundbite but establishes context.

3. You guys should also get paid to write industry whitepapers. The key is that it should be from multiple vendors. For example, if BEA asks you to write on their portal, you should tell them that you will also pursue funding from Sun, IBM and others in order to level the playing field and remove bias.

Danno: i take it that you’re drawing a line b/twn me and Scoble? i hope so

Ian: that’s pretty much the way that we look at it, but it’s good to hear it from you.

Paul: i hope it was clear, but if not: we will never, ever exclude anybody from discussion simply because they are not a client. that would not only be unethical, it would make our analysis extremely low value. what we do control, rather than who we discuss, is when and how they’re discussed.

Mike: i agree. in a perfect world, we’d be giving coverage to whoever we felt like it, but unfortunately my day seems to have less, not more, time that it used to

Andi: for the most part i think you’re correct, but unfortunately there are certainly players in our industry that act less than scrupulously. some common sense, as you articulate, from a vendor – and buyer – goes a long way.

Dean: great point about the keynotes; i know very few analysts that don’t do that. maybe the differentiator in terms of perception is the size of the audience? still, a great point.

Mike: hadn’t thought about the PR firm angle, but it’s a good point. we definitely feel differentiated from those folks, and that’s perhaps why i take exception to the claims here.

Jaime: you’re absolutely right – we try to be as transparent as possible. in cases like this, it’s essential.

ARonaut: totally agreed that force feeding journos is pointless, which is why we don’t try. we’ll talk about our experiences with the product in question, but if they want to know about competitors, that’s just fine. we’re not trying to restrict coverage in any way.

Jon: i’m fond of saying that never is a long time, so is it accurate to say that we never do that? no, not particularly. but it depends on the value for our business. appearing on panels is, in my view, a high value opportunity for us and has resulted in biz opps – while i can’t say that we’ve ever had anything come of an appearance in a release. same with blogs; they’re high value. time is money, and we choose to spend on what we feel will benefit us either directly or indirectly.

David: we would indeed consider it, but we make exceptions only very rarely because it’s not particularly fair to our paying clients to give away freely what they are paying for.

To clarify something in ARonaut’s comment, my interest in this had nothing to do with Frost & Sullivan and awards.

It was sparked off by a post on Silicon Valley Watcher in which Tom said that “Gartner and IDC and Forrester analysts usually provide such quotes and they are always paid by the company issuing the press release(!)”

And my opening standpoint was a) I had never come across this and b) if it was happening, it was wrong.

Analyst endorsement is taken seriously in the market. When it’s not disclosed, pay for play is wrong. It can lead people to make decisions and draw conclusions that they mightn’t otherwise make.

I do appreciate that giving quotes to clients is a slightly different matter and more open to debate. It’s been very interesting to follow the discussions on various blogs.

I also suspect from what you and James have both said, that if Redmonk was asked by a non-client to provide a quote / act as a press reference, that you would consider it – but if (and only if) you truly believed in the company and what it was doing. If I’m wrong on that, I apologise in advance.

An additional point – are you really saying that you would never allow your company to gain extra visibility through the request for a quote? Value isn’t always about money, I’ve sat on panels and given presentations for nothing, in teh knowledge there were spin-off benefits. All this said, I think James’s “time is money” argument is a bit spurious given the amount of effort he puts into, and information he gives out freely on his own blog!

As I’ve said on James’s blog as well, its all about context and justification. I don’t think analysts should ever be pushing out endorsements, they shoud be pushing out analysis. This goes for quotes as much as presentations, papers, reports and so on.

You took the debate slightly off from where it started, which is not an issue

The original question in David’s blog was whether analysts could/should charge for quotes. We found the idea ridiculous and said in the post referencenced below that we’ve never seen an analyst charging for a quote in Europe:
http://armadgeddon.blogspot.com/2006/02/ar-101-series-analysts-and-press.html

The confusion came from as David heard that Frost & Sullivan (who anyway?) charges vendors for receiving awards. Gross still, but not quite the same thing.

We then gave some guidelines on how vendors can leverage analysts in the media -read it here:
http://armadgeddon.blogspot.com/2006/02/ar-101-series-analysts-and-press.html

The bottom line is that if analysts believe in what one does, word of mouth will spread. Trying to shovel analysts quotes in journos’ throat WILL backfire AND will both the vendor and the analyst reputations.

Redmonk publishes freely and talks to the press without apparent reservation. Clients and non-clients get coverage, as a result. Press releases are different from news reporting — they’re for-pay tools aimed at promotion and publicity. Analysts who participate should be paid for their time like everyone else.

As long as you are honest, you ought to be able to earn an honest living.