Briefing bloginvitation

Tim details here his next Adobe Analyst/Customer Day.

It's interesting on several counts:

1. The format is good, packed with customer interactions. Analysts like that kind of events and it should have a positive impact for Adobe.

2. The invite is on a blog, in the open. This is a departure from most AR events invites that tend to be more on the secretive side. This has a competitive impact as Tim is letting his rivals (Microsoft for instance) know of his event. He also has to extend the invite to all analysts who read his blog!

3. The wine should be good, ain't James?

Believe it or not? A rift between H&K and KCG

My sister always sounds happy for me when I tell that I'll be spending a day in downtown San Francisco. Although it just means a day working from the Courtyard, it does give me a few hours to exchange news with friends who work nearby. Given a lobby with both Starbucks and pretty fast WiFi I can multi-task, and multi-gossip.

The most repeatable story from breakfast concerns our friends at Hill and Knowlton and the guys at Knowledge Capital. It seems that H&K feels that KCG has been presenting H&K as if it's a happy customer of theirs. However, the opposite seems to be true. H&K ended its token partnership with KCG a few years ago, and didn't get much out of it. Now H&K is developing the same sort of advisory services, as well as metrics like those that KCG resells from Biz360 and Evalueserve.

Personally, my impression was that they have been buddies: I'm pretty sure I've seen H&K listed as a KCG partner, and Stephen certainly made me think they were close. Perhaps the two firms have drifted apart. My friend feels that KCG has continued to talk about H&K as if it gets its AR strategies and skills from KCG; meanwhile H&K has gone in its own direction, learning more from its work with Carter's team at HP can anyone could learn from KCG. KCG and H&K are now, more or less, full competitors -- even if H&K is more focussed on selling AR to exisiting PR clients.

This cold war has turned hot after a client asked H&K about its link to KCG. It turns out that KCG's materials referenced H&K. H&K has told Bill to remove all the references. My friend feels KCG has been too slow to make that happen. Everyone seems to be ratty with everyone.

Glancing at Bill's website, I can't see any references to H&K. However, I also think that KCG has pulled its client list from its website, perhaps temporarily.

Kiwi shed light on the Borg

We've been sent the following link (thanks Jeff):
Computerworld > It’s time to step into the light.

The main thread is a realisation that most reports are paid for and questionning on Gartner's credibility. This seems to be a growing concern in the press and should worry any AR professional (see alsoMore reations to the Information Week Credibility of Analysts article).

"Former employees say that where once the independence of Gartner and other large US-based research companies was totally accepted, there is now a level of discomfort about that same independence. "

Probably more interesting are the reports on how Gartner lost ground in New Zealand:

"But because of expectations in the wider Australasian region, the company withdrew from New Zealand and tried to sell its services from Australia. It has only recently reopened an office here. It is generally accepted that the company lost its ability to engage with its customers on a personal basis."

To save time on product selection, don't use Gartner?

An interesting piece of research was recently published on Gartner's web site:
To Save Time on Product Selection, Flip a Coin (by Jeffrey Mann) (password required).

The piece argues that users spend too much time and efforts in the evaluation process, should draw a short list, then randomly select a winner and stick with that decision.

Interesting advice. We wonder what Gartner consulting customers -who pay for selection and evaluation advice- think of this recommendation?

Is PR a dwarf planet?

Duncan has done the maths on an IDC report (does it make it an extrapolation of an estimation?) and figured out AR spend rose to 28% of PR spend [Analyst Equity]... which is still only 2% of marketing spend!

It would be interesting to compare AR and PR spend (7.1% of the same marketing treasure chest) with their respective impact on sales...

We bet that the results could be could have an impact on the PR planet... Any volunteers to challenge its status in the marketing galaxy?

The revolving door is in full spin...

Looks like the summer analyst job market is in full swing (see previous post Summer revolving doors).

David, him again, lists a few more in this other post: Analyst Insight: A few more analysts in Europe including:

• Jakob Heckscher joining IDC covering SCM and CRM
• Joao da Silva moves to the IDC European Mobile and Wireless team
• Phil Sayer and Ricardo Arruda both join Forrester covering telcos and Financial Services
• Pete Cunningham and Mehar Zulfikar joined Canalys
  
• Louella Fernandes joins Quocirca
• David Perry joins Freeform Dynamics

From another source we gather that Lee Geishecker resigned from Gartner (yet another high profile departure) where she was covering ERP and various other software bits. Does anyone know where she's going?

Summer revolving doors

David summs up various movements in this post: Analyst Insight: Various analyst changes.

In brief, Quocirca finally signed up a new analyst, Butler loses another analyst (fed-up with compiling door-wedges-reports?) and Forrester shrinks too. It looks like the latter still has some open headcounts to cover consumer markets and applications to further enrich their "molten core". Quite why they missed the train of departing soon-to-be-ex-META analysts still puzzles us...

How much then?

Stinky wanted to know how much a Gartner analyst makes...

The ARmadgeddon staff estimates (.3 probability) this to a range starting from £60k for a junior to £120k for a senior analyst.

Has anyone got comments?