Marketing guru and author Seth Godin in his post It (almost) always happens this way discusses how established companies are wedded to the status quo and are slow to change. New companies without the assets of the established companies will grab every new thing out there to try to compete. Often the new companies win over time because they are not stifled by the status quo. Not exactly a new or brilliant insight, but it got me thinking about the analyst marketplace.
 
Today there are the established firms (e.g., AMR, Forrester, Gartner and IDC) that have been around since the 1980’s that on the surface have not changed all that much. Then there are the insurgents like Gartner alumni Vinnie Mirchandani at Deal Architect and James Governor of Redmonk with his Monkchips blog who claim that that they are becoming just as influential as the dinosaur firms. As a consequence, we in the AR community should pay just as much attention to them as old firms.

Hmmm. What’s a poor simple AR practitioner to do? First off, are the established firms really ignoring new media and are the insurgents really innovative users of new media?

Gartner is using its size and financial strength to get into new media more than any other firm. The Talking Technology audio magazine is now available on website as streaming media and not just on CD. There are blogs by analyst teams, both topical and ongoing, though there are relatively few blogs. The Gartner Voice podcast is available on iTunes. There is streaming media from conferences. Finally, Gartner set up a Blogger Lounge at US Spring Symposium. Gartner is also promoting its new media offering. Well, it looks like Gartner has embraced the new media. While none of the Gartner blogs are yet in Technobabble 2.0's Top 100 Analyst Blogs list, it will be interesting to see what will happen if Gartner decides to promote them. 

The other analyst firms are not nearly as aggressive. With the exception of Charlene Li, later joined by Josh Bernoff, Forrester has been very tentative about new media. There are a few Forrester blogs, but the only podcasts are behind the paywall and are short term experiments. Plus, Forrester does not actively promote the blogs and I have a heck of time finding out about new blogs. AMR has put its toe in the water with two podcasts – First Thing Monday and Research Matters with eWeek – but no blogs. Frankly, the most lame established firm when it comes to new media is IDC with a single blog – IDC eXchange -- by Frank Gens, which gets very few and infrequent posts. There is a companion podcast but it is merely Frank reading his blog entry. Very boring.

The insurgents are using blogs, but making relatively little use of other forms of new media that I can find. For instance, Redmonk as a podcast, but it has only had three episodes since May 1st. Plus, it is really difficult to find evidence that they are influential whether by directly impacting HP’s sales deals or broadly impacting market perception. The insurgent bloggers all want me and other AR professionals to take it as an article of faith that even though there is no proof that they are influential. That is nice, but they all demand hard proof from HP and other vendors about our claims. Isn’t it a little inconsistent of them to want to be exempted from providing proof? However, my early research is that IT executives are reading blogs – more on that in a later post – so the insurgents aren’t completely full of hot air. But my problem is that of all the bloggers, which ones are really influential?

For HP’s Corporate AR this is a really serious issue because we do not have unlimited resources and have to prioritize our efforts. I’m not picking sides and keeping my eyes open to the possibilities of refocusing my efforts.

BTW, is the whole “dinosaurs versus insurgents” thing really a red herring? Perhaps there is opportunity for both communities to grow their influence and thrive. More on that in a later post.