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{ 2009 02 17 }

links for 2009-02-17

  • Should vendors be investing in analyst conference sponsorships in 2009? « SageCircle Blog
    "One important point to keep in mind is that vendors should not worry that lack of sponsorship will hurt the relationship with analysts." — an incredibly naive view, in my opinion. Many vendors indicate privately that they are afraid to not sponsor a Gartner conference because of how it might damage their relationship, and therefore their future rankings. With Gartner and Forrester making such huge revenues from their conferences, failure of a vendor to put up the 10's of 1000's necessary for a sponsorship (plus their own booth and staffing costs) will impact the analysts' bottom line, and has to have some impact on the relationship.
    (tags: analysts)
Posted by Sandy Kemsley on Tuesday, February 17, 2009, at 12:01 pm. Filed under Links. Follow any responses to this post with its comments RSS feed. You can post a comment or trackback from your blog.

{ 2 } Comments

  1. Harald Nehring | February 17, 2009 at 12:37 pm | Permalink

    Sandy, you’re touching on a very sensitive issue here! It reminds me of other “chinese walls” between the analysing and investing side of a bank or the advertising and journalistic sides of a publisher. Normally it’s in the best interest of the respective company to maintain the separation, but in times like these salespeople are getting _very_ creative, I can tell you. At the end we have to know that they invest in “thought leadership” (aka financial analysis, global news, industry analysis) to gain the credibility required to attract investors, advertizers or event sponsors.

  2. Carter Lusher | February 17, 2009 at 2:05 pm | Permalink

    Hi Sandy, Thanks for the link.

    As a former Gartner Research Fellow and someone who talks on a regular basis to analysts from all the major analyst firms that put on events, I know that the vast, vast majority of analysts simply do not incorporate whether or not a vendor sponsors an event into the relationship. Another data point is that I use to be the director Corporate AR at one of the largest vendors and when I told analysts I would not see them at one of their conferences because my company was not sponsoring all I got was a shrug.

    For one thing, analysts are not measured nor bonused on vendor sponsorships. That is even more the case during a recession when companies in all industries are cutting back on travel, marketing sponsorships, etc. While a sales rep might be frantic to close some deal, the analysts don’t care.

    Your point about “Many vendors indicate privately that they are afraid…” is a quite common attitude. But that does not make it true. Same urban myth that surrounds buying annual subscription contracts

    http://sagecircle.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/analyst-integrity-issues-the-urban-legend-that-wont-die/

    While having an annual subscription provides useful tools, such as inquiry, the mere act of signing the check does not do a vendor any good. It is what the vendor does after they sign the check that is useful. A vendor that buys a million dollars of advisory seats but whose people never make inquiry calls will find itself out influenced by a vendor with a single $25k advisory seat but who leverages the access to analysts on a frequent basis.

    BTW, Gartner is a $1.2 billion corporate, Forrester had $241m in 2008 revenues. Any particular sponsorship is an accounting rounding error and probably less than what the firms spend on paperclips.

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