Has Ovum’s influence diminished?

Ovum, my former employer, finally succumbed to the lure of cash, when it agreed to be acquired by Datamonitor. There is a near universal condemnation of this move by the Analyst Relations industry – read the backlash here.

It’s nearly four years since I worked at Ovum, and it has clearly changed in this time as it headed towards its IPO this year. But its internal organisational changes have been mirrored by a rapid increase in the firm’s influence, especially in the telecoms sector. It even makes KCG’s list of Deal Makers/Breakers (but only in Europe). Ovum was identified by IDC (another former employer of mine) as a prime competitor, again in Europe.

I’ll leave the wisdom or otherwise of the acquisition to emerge over time. No predictions here. But is Ovum’s influence impacted by this transaction? And where does this leave Ovum’s customers?

Clearly, Ovum’s geographic reach is strengthened, especially in the US. The US has been somewhat elusive for Ovum, and it has sought for over ten years to become an established player “across the pond.” It now has broad access to this market, but I suspect that much of the analysis (and analysts?) will have to be reorientated around the US market for it to be purchased there. This will take time, money and "restructuring."

I’m worried, too, about Ovum’s status as a respected and independent voice. Among the plethora of analyst firms, those that had no tint of vendor pay-to-play were few indeed, and Ovum headed the list. Being integrated into Datamonitor and Butler will be a major culture clash, in personalities but also in market position. There will be tears along the way.

Ovum’s analysts always aimed for the highest standards of research and opinion, even if this conflicted with commercial opportunism. While Ovum has had to become more business-focussed recently, I still think that analysis processes will have to change. And this can only be to the detriment of customers.

I have no doubt that the new entity will strive to counter such concerns, and I genuinely wish the ex-Ovum staff well – I have great respect for Chris, Fiona, Fash and the rest. But if you’re an Ovum customer, perhaps you should defer your renewal until the dust settles.

influencer marketing

Crisis? What crisis? Do marketing directors know that marketing is changing?

I’ve read seven books in the past six months that collectively convince me that marketing is changing. For the record, the books are:

The Tipping Point
The Influentials
Permission Marketing
The World is Flat
Purple Cow
Naked Conversations
The Long Tail

The Tipping Point describes how new ideas and products are rapidly adopted through a network of influential individuals, largely by word-of-mouth. The Influentials makes a more detailed examination of a similar concept, and how to influence these influencers.

Permission Market promotes customer engagement and collaboration in marketing, as opposed to “Interruption Marketing”, which is the equivalent of shouting at people (may get your attention but not conducive to selling something).

The World is Flat record the huge changes in the interrelationships between buyers and suppliers from an economic viewpoint.

Purple Cow is Seth Godin’s rant at marketing - “Traditional approaches are now obsolete. One hundred years of marketing thought are gone.” Instead, you, your product and your marketing must be remarkable.

In Naked Conversations, blogging is the focus, but some interesting tidbits of marketing landscape changes are thrown in. for example, Richard Edelman (PR big cheese) is quoted as saying that “traditional marketing is in its twilight years.”

The Long Tail charts the demise of the mass market and the opportunity for infinite, though smaller, market segments.

My reading was supplemented by a bunch of academic research on the efficacy (lack thereof) of advertising, PR and other traditional marketing techniques (email me for sources if you’re interested…).

It seems there is a consensus in the marketing world that, as economic, culture and commerce change, traditional techniques don’t work any more, and that approaches to market must also change.

Here’s my point – has anyone told the marketing directors and managers in the technology sector?

There are a host of new marketing techniques that should be stimulating the marketing profession: blogging, conversational marketing, word-of-mouth, influencer marketing, permission marketing, and so on.

Why then are marketing heads doing what they’ve always done?

Here’s an example: Intel are currently running an ad on prime time TV. Why? Because Intel is a big brand and that’s what big brands do, right? But unless you’re about to cobble together your PC from individual components, you’ll never buy an Intel product directly. Never, ever.

Who influences your decision to buy an Intel-based PC? Not a glitzy TV ad. It’s more than likely to be Dell’s component purchaser in Ireland. Or your technology support team. Or the sales guy in PC World. Or a chum that just bought a PC last month.

Now how do you influence these folk? Certainly not by running a TV ad. Creativity and new approaches are required. But are marketing heads listening? Or happy to spend their budget on "brand awareness" and other unmeasurables?

It’s not just Intel (sorry to pick on them). The standard budgeting process for most technology firms is to copy last year’s plan and make minor tweaks. -2% for PR this year, +2% for events. The usual 30% for telemarketing.

Einstein defined insanity as doing the same things and expecting different results. Why are marketers doing the same stuff and yet expecting better results?

All of this rant would be irrelevant if things were going well for technology firms. The last time I looked, though, our industry is growing at 5-6%, including GDP growth of 3.3% and inflation of 2% - roughly 0% growth in real terms. And IDC predicts little change to 2009.

So if I was a marketing director, I’d be focused on drumming up business, enabling my sales colleagues and trying to steal market share from everywhere.

I’d do something different. I’d at least do something different from my competitors. And unless last year was a stunning financial success, I would start with a new plan.

influencer marketing

Is there are hierarchy of influencers?

On a recent AR blog it was stated that analysts are “super-influencers”, whose influence “ripples” across other lesser influencers (media, bloggers, consultants, system integrators, financial analysts).

Hmmm. This is a very analyst-centric view, and indicative of the broad AR/PR industry mindset. There's another example of this perspective here, and it is common.

But is it right? There are three problems with this approach. The first is that, while I don’t doubt that some analysts are key influencers, not all of them are. There are analysts, including those at Gartner, IDC, Forrester and Ovum, that are important and those that are not.

Remember that it’s not Gartner Inc. (or whichever firm) that has influence over end-user decision makers, but the individual analyst. Having worked at analyst firms (Ovum and IDC) for 12 years I’ve seen this situation from the inside. We knew which individuals had influence and which didn’t.

The second problem with an analyst-centric view of influence is that, in three years of analysing influencer communities for our clients, Influencer50 has noticed a broad spread of influencer types. There are analysts and journalists, of course. But there are also regulators, consulting firms, management authors, academics, and others – over 20 different types of influencer. And in a ranked list of 50 influencers, the top10 typically contains a mixture of these influencer types.

The idea that only analysts are super-influencers is without basis. There are indeed super-influencers, but these include a variety of other types. Also, some influencers are more important than others generically. But some come into ascendancy at different times. So it’s important to understand when influencers are exerting influence.

The third and final flaw in the analyst-centric model is that influence does not ripple out in one direction from a small set of individuals. Rather than a hierarchy, influence works across a network of individuals, with some having more connections than others. Influence flows in multiple directions, as industry professionals discuss and debate ideas and opinions. The emergence of influencer communities demonstrates this important dimension.

All of this points to a more balanced approach to influencers and Influencer Marketing. AR and PR are fine, but there are other key influencers to attend to. Ignore them at your peril.

influencer marketing

silicon.com agenda setters - A pointless list?

An email from silicon.com arrived in my inbox today. The first line read “Who are the most influential individuals in the technology industry?” You can assume it got my attention.

Silicon.com publishes an annual list of agenda setters, those folks that drive the technology industry forwards. It’s always an interesting exercise, probably fun to compile and debate, much like The Times Rich List, Time magazine’s Time 100, and your own list of all-time favourite songs.

It is also, like the other lists, ultimately pointless. What decisions will be made based on the silicon.com list? Will anyone do something different, or create something new? You can’t even use it as a predictor of stock market value. The agenda setters list is irrelevant to most IT professionals.

I doubt whether I’d have bothered to blog on the list if it wasn’t for the more subtle problem with the list. It’s to do with the focus of influence. That is, who is being influenced by the influencers on the list. The answer is, most probably, other people on the list. Meg Whitman is influenced by Jack Ma, and buys Skype. Ray Ozzie is influenced by Steve Jobs, and launches Zunes. Jonathan Schwartz is influenced by Steve Jobs, and restores the fortunes of a failing company (we’ll have to see whether that story ends happily…).

Your average IT decision maker, on the other hand, is unlikely ever to make contact with Messrs Ma, Ozzie, Jobs and the other top execs named on the list. The typical IT Director is more likely to be influenced by an independent consultant you’ve never heard of. Or a trusted reseller. Or an influential blogger.

It’s the people with low profiles that carry influence at an everyday, practical level. They may not make a very exciting list. But they make the IT industry work.