A PR choice
- You can pitch a story that isn’t really news, for example calling attention to the success of a product you’d been shipping for a while.
- You can pitch a story with an embargo.
Choose one.
Asking for an embargo on information already in the public domain is really lame.
Public and analyst relations: An example of epic fail
I post from time to time about stupid PR tricks, but last night I had an experience that was a whole different level of appalling, for reasons of ethics and general incompetence alike. Within hours, the vendor’s CEO had emailed me that the offending PR person would be terminated this morning.*
*By the way, that means an intriguing New England startup needs a new PR firm. By tomorrow it should be obvious who I mean.
It started as an ordinary kind of bad pitch. The PR rep emailed offering a briefing with a mystery company. I immediately deduced that the company was one I was in fact set up to talk with today, and had indeed been writing about since 2009. Besides being annoyed that I’d had to scramble to set up my own last-moment briefing with a company I’d led the way in writing about, I also bristled at the fact that the pitch included quotes from a couple of my competitors, whom I shall unimaginatively refer to as Dave and Merv.* So far, no big deal.
*Both personally and professionally, they’re two of my favorites. Even so, I dislike being told that I should use them as authority figures to be copied in my own view formation.
But then it occurred to me that those quotes probably weren’t approved, but instead were just lifted in an unauthorized manner from conversations, and indeed probably didn’t reflect the analysts’ precise views. So I messaged Dave and Merv. Shortly thereafter, the PR rep emailed me:
Neither David or Merv have authorized the quote for publication. It was sent in error to you, as I had believed you had agreed to the sharing of confidential information.
The bulk of my response to that — and the essence of this post — was: Read more
| Categories: Analyst relations, Ethics, Marketing communications, Public relations, Startups, Technology marketing | 31 Comments |
Quotes from analysts in vendor press releases
For the second straight post, I’m mixing the general and the personal. Sorry!
I jumped into an #ARchat on Twitter Tuesday, and set off a discussion about the subject of analyst quotes in press releases. Since that chat has been blogged, starting with a partly accurate* paraphrase of my views, I figure I may as well state those myself. Read more
| Categories: Analyst relations, Ethics, Public relations | 6 Comments |
What technology influencers really think about certain PR tactics
The following is a transcript of an actual IM exchange I had a few hours ago.
Bottom line: PR shouldn’t be a pompous ass, either on its own behalf or the client’s.
| Categories: Marketing communications, Oracle, Public relations, Technology marketing | 5 Comments |
Further notes on ethics and analyst research
It’s been quite a weekend for discussion of analysts and ethics. A few more thoughts:
1. The terms “ethics” and “ethical” are used somewhat inconsistently, along a spectrum from:
There are procedural rules of good behavior, and if you violate them that’s bad. That’s the essence of ethics.
to
Unless the motive was impure, an act was not unethical.
Either extreme, in my opinion, quickly leads to nonsense.
2. Actually, I think calling that a spectrum is a bit misleading. I’d prefer to say an act is unethical if:
- It is (too) likely to have bad effect AND
- The perpetrator was guilty of bad behavior in not acting differently.
Thus, somebody can make an error in the area of ethics and still be fully ethical if, upon realizing it, they straightforwardly correct it. On the other hand, a pattern of such “errors” can suffice to convict them of unethical behavior.
3. In particular, I stand by the following views from the post and comment thread that set this all off:
- Oracle behaves unethically by repeatedly foisting off sponsored analyst content as independent research.
- Merv Adrian is a fine, ethical guy.
- One reason I believe Merv is an ethical guy is because when I pointed out a screw-up to him, he characterized it as an oversight (I believe him) and said he’d move quickly to correct it.
- Commenters in that thread who suggested I shouldn’t even have mentioned Merv’s error were out of line. When you make an innocent mistake, you may suffer some embarrassment as a result.
4. Merv’s analysis of white paper ethical issues was excellent, and supersedes mine. Continuing the oneupsmanship :), I’ll now try to synthesize by saying: Read more
| Categories: Analyst relations, Ethics, Marketing communications, Oracle, Technology marketing | 3 Comments |
The ethics of white papers
In a recent post, I made certain assumptions about what is or isn’t ethical in vendor-sponsored analyst research. I’d already discussed the triggering incident briefly (i.e., in Twitter direct messages and the like) with a couple of analysts I respect, namely Merv Adrian (the one most directly involved) and Ray Wang. It’s safe to say we’re in at least rough agreement.
However, a couple of comments on that post took me strongly to task. Perhaps not coincidentally, one came from a vendor, and another from somebody whose main role in the “analyst” community is to produce and publish – you guessed it! – vendor-sponsored content. One option was to just blow those comments off as nonsensical, since they weren’t really responsive to the actual post. But I think those rather surprising remarks also suggest it is time to reopen the subject of vendor-sponsored analyst research.
Vendors typically pay for white papers, webinars, podcasts, in-person speeches, etc. for some combination of five reasons:
- They want to connect with sales prospects. If Merv or Claudia Imhoff or I speak on a webinar, registration will be higher than if only company execs spoke. Similarly, you can capture more registration information from prospects who want to download a white paper if it was written by a third-party analyst.
- They want general endorsement from the analyst. If a well-regarded analyst is associated with a firm, that’s good for the firm’s image.
- They specifically want endorsement from the analyst for their marketing claims. Many of the ethical challenges with vendor-sponsored research or other content lie in this area.
- They want the analyst to do a better job of explaining something than they think they could do themselves. This is the ethically purer version of the prior point. Realistically, they often can’t be separated. E.g., most vendor-sponsored white papers will involve a combination of the two. The same could be said for webinars such as the ones I did for Aster Data last year.
- They want to give the analyst some money to enhance the relationship, and this way they get something other than advice in return. Personally, I won’t do content-creation business with a vendor unless they first buy actual consulting services (via the Monash Advantage), but I’m in the minority, and in fact didn’t always have that policy myself.
In my opinion, #1, 2, and 4 cause relatively little in the way of ethical problems. #5 is an unavoidable fact of life. But #3 raises problems that can and should be addressed head-on. Read more
Often the best press release is the one you DON’T issue
I recently received an email that started
ENTERPRISEDB CEO ED GOES WITH THE BUFFET AT LOCAL SIZZLER FOLLOWING SPEECH AT OPEN SOURCE BUSINESS CONFERENCE
SAN FRANCISCO — EnterpriseDB CEO Ed Boyajian rejected a wide array of fixed, rigid, printed menu options at a local Sizzler this week in favor of the restaurant chain’s sprawling buffet.
“It was clear that the open, free, unconstrained nature of the buffet was the right choice,” Boyajian said.
This is not an April Fool’s joke. I really received that email a couple of weeks ago. True, it was a spoof, and came from somebody unaffiliated with EnterpriseDB. But the real EnterpriseDB press release it was spoofing was almost as bad, starting Read more
Five kinds of public relations
I comment about public relations from two different standpoints:
- As a consultant to the technology industry
- As a target of public relations myself
Sometimes these discussions are very fruitful. But other times they are “Head, meet brick wall.” Perhaps this post will help.
This post actually started as a set of specific tips, the biggest of which is uncouple your PR from your press releases. I’ll put the others below — but first, I’d like to cover a little theory.
There are (at least) five different things you can try to do via public relations:
- “Sell” to the press (and bloggers and so on), by which I mean that you try to induce stories, and you probably measure success by a count of stories written (presumably weighted by the quality of the publication, the favorableness of the mention, and so on), and your activities are focused on contacting the press in pursuit of that goal.
- “Market” to the press, by which I mean that you try to create a favorable disposition toward having them say what you’d want them to. This can be measured in the same ways as “selling” success, but usually on a more long-term basis.
- Market through influencers to your end customers and prospects. Here I’m saying “influencers” rather than “press”, because social media, pure word of mouth, and so on can also contribute to success.
- Market through influencers to other influencers. It is now a regular consulting exercise for me to walk clients through the whole chain of which influencers listen to which other influencers. (If you want to work that kind of thing out for yourself, social media observation is a good way to start.)
- Market to potential buyers directly. This has become increasingly realistic as the internet has matured.
| Categories: Analyst relations, Marketing communications, Marketing theory, Public relations, Technology marketing | 8 Comments |
Note to technology startups
The following was originally part of my post today regarding Groovy Corp, but I decided to post it separately instead.
Getting a favorable mention in a couple of prominent blogs should not be the be-all, end-all of your launch strategy. Rather, you should be laying the groundwork for getting enterprises to place significant bets on your unproven technology. Eliciting the “I’m interested in that if it works” reaction is only a very small part of your overall marketing challenge.
Related links
| Categories: Marketing communications, Startups, Technology marketing | Leave a Comment |
Sarah Dopp re social media expertise
As I’ve previously noted, the concept of “social media expert” is problematic at best. Still, people are constantly trying to figure it out, because … well, because they want to get paid for their “social media expertise.” Sarah Dopp offers an interesting take on social media expertise, which I shall herewith quote at length. My comments are in italics.
1) Since having a social media presence is about reputation and relationships, it needs to be personal to the individual. … The approach needs to be custom-tailored to fit the client’s personality and worldview, and the client needs to have a lot of say in the development of this fit. … Agreed.
2) Having an effective social media presence is different from traditional marketing, and it’s also different from the ways we’ve been using the internet in the past. True but overstated. There are three golden rules of social media marketing:
- Make your messages robust.
- Train and trust many of your employees to deliver the message, implicitly and explicitly.
- Trust your employees to show their own personalities without hopelessly undermining the “personality” of your enterprise.
The first two have actually been good management practice for decades, and the third one frequently worked as well.
3) Developing a social media presence has to be done gradually. A client has to pay attention to what’s working and what’s not, listen to feedback from the community, and constantly refine their approach with little changes. Agreed.
4) The social media consulting model is in contrast to the web development consulting model, where you just build something and walk away until it needs to be updated. It’s also in contrast to the idea that social media consultants exist to give expert advice — if clients think of them that way, they’ll only go to them with the big questions, and try to answer the little questions on their own. But social media success is in the details, and it’s the little questions that will make or break an online presence. Agreed. I have clients who ask me to review a large fraction of their individual blog posts. I think that’s a great use of my time … but then, I think the same thing about press releases.
| Categories: Marketing communications, Marketing theory | 23 Comments |