Should you sue your influencers?
Via AnalystAnalyst I see that tech vendor ZL is suing Gartner. Interesting tactic. My first thought was that this strategy is unlikely to encourage Gartner to write nice things (or anything) about ZL in the future. They’ll probably just ignore them. Which is probably worse than being in the bottom left corner of the MQ.
ZL might have invested more time and money in analyst relations than in lawyers fees, but I’ll watch the outcome with interest. For example, might this action lead to Gartner requiring vendors to sign a ‘promise-not-to-sue’ agreement (must be a legal term for this…)? Might Gartner refuse to cover the more litigious vendors? Or, if ZL wins its case, will it make analysts’ analysis bland and generic?
Categories: analyst relations, analysts, influencer relations
Gartner
The real question is, how much of an influencer is Gartner going forward? They cannot hope to live on Brand and Reputation any more, no one can. Buyers know too much to be as dependent as they once were.
Longer version at the link.
Interesting that you cite CMS Watch – I think they’re asking some key questions about the model for analyst firms, probably at the expense of revenues from vendors.