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What analyst relations should have learnt from the last decade

In June’s Lighthouse webinar, Lighthouse’s managing director will share the top ten lessons that the analyst relations community should have learnt over the last decade. Since working as an analyst at Ovum during the dot.bomb internet boom of 1999-2000, Duncan Chapple has worked with almost all of the world’s top technology and telecom brands over […]

Editorial | May 24th, 2010 | Continued

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NDAs mislead, slow, weaken and pressure analyst relationships

Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are a continual bone of contention between vendors and the analyst industry. Lighthouse feels that their impact is almost universally negative, especially in relation to briefings and analyst events. This post aims to outline the four main negative effects and respond to the three most commonly given reasons in favour of the […]

Editorial | February 24th, 2010 | Continued

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Who should be responsible for social media?

Not influencer relations or analyst relations, but mainstream marketing communications should manage your firm’s social media. That’s the outcome of a small-scale poll we ran over the last half of 2009. Our unscientific survey aimed to gather some opinions, and the overall view is that social media need to be centralised rather than in a […]

Editorial | January 12th, 2010 | Continued

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Gartner’s purchase of Burton is a ‘double-whammy’, so the fight’s for second place

Gartner’s purchase of Burton Group continues the M&A process flowing through the analyst industry under the impact of the recession. The initial analysis that I found most interesting was by Phil Fersht. As always, Carter had a good summary of the bits and bytes.
I don’t think Gartner “needed” Burton but I think it is a […]

Editorial | January 6th, 2010 | Continued

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How Pierre Audoin Consultants hit the mainstream

On December 17 we ran a webinar to take a closer look at Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC).  Close watchers of the services industry will need no introduction to PAC, one of Europe’s oldest industry analyst firms. The sort of projects it wins are instructive: it has been appointed by the EC to lead a consortium […]

Editorial | December 9th, 2009 | Continued

About Lighthouse

For over ten years Lighthouse has been helping the world’s leading technology product and services providers to build brand equity and increase sales through increasing the effectiveness of their analyst relations activities. Our action research method, IDEAL, is based on ten years of measurable, international success during which we have become the only AR consultancy […]

New on our blog

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Making the most of endorsements

Imagine the conversation: “Great news! The CEO of our biggest client has agreed to give us an endorsement. What do we do next?”.
Most companies are familiar with making the most of case studies. They step through the problem, the implimentation and the results. Case studies are powerful pieces of promotions writing, typically much shorter than […]

20Jul2010 | Editorial | 0 comments | Continued
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Andrew Parker has died

Andrew Parker, Forrester vice president and lead IT services & sourcing analyst in EMEA, passed away last Sunday after losing his battle with cancer.
Many of Lighthouse’s clients have worked with Andrew for several years, and we found him a warm and generous man as well as an insightful analyst.
Forrester’s Chistine Ferrusi has written a memorial […]

13Jul2010 | Editorial | 0 comments | Continued
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July’s webinar shows how to gain from four major changes in analyst relations

 Lighthouse’s analyst attitude surveys give us a deeply insight into the mood in the analyst community. Looking over our recent interviews, we have seen four trends developing in the first half of the year, which produce major challenges for AR managers. In our webinar on July 15, we’ll discuss these four major changes - and […]

23Jun2010 | Editorial | 0 comments | Continued
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Guest post: How analyst relations can evaluate social media

Where can you start to track AR through social media? The best way to start involves four elements which reflect the development of the relationship between the AR department and the analysts:

1.    Awareness measures initial exposure and engagement. How many analyst friends and followers do you have? What’s the volume of hits and clicks coming […]

27May2010 | Editorial | 0 comments | Continued
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Webinar: Four steps for measuring the impact of social media outreach

Research by Lighthouse has found that few analyst relations teams are measuring how effective social media outreach is. In a webinar on May 20, you’ll learn what the weaknesses are in social media measurement - and how to fix it.
The growth of social media requires the need for evaluation to expand its reach and complexity. […]

10May2010 | Editorial | 0 comments | Continued
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Heath Weber’s primer on Industry Analyst Relations

Heath Weber wrote this primer to sum up more than three years work leading Worldcom’s internal and external industry analyst relations program from 1999 to 2002. It prompted one of the first articles on Analyst Equity and, because we were disappointed to see that it’s now offline, we thought we’d republish it here.
“The strongest […]

14Apr2010 | Editorial | 1 comment | Continued
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May webinar: Influencing analysts’ growing market for consulting

Springboard’s acquisition of Hydrasight (discussed last month) and the expansion of Experton Group into the UK reflect a important shifting value curve in the analyst industry, with important implications for analyst relations managers. In our ‘Advisor Spotlight’ webinar on Thursday May 6, we’ll explain what’s happening, how to anticipate the changes, and what to do […]

9Apr2010 | Editorial | 0 comments | Continued
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When analysts don’t take international markets seriously…

If the analysts following your firm don’t take your international markets seriously, then there are three tactics to correct the situation: work out whether they take any international markets seriously, pinpoint and address the weaknesses of your international strategy, and focus more on analysts who do understand international markets.
Here’s an example: One US-headquartered systems and […]

15Mar2010 | Editorial | 0 comments | Continued
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Is sustainable business selfish or altruistic?

Providers of ‘Green’ solutions can build momentum by focussing on the present and future economic benefits of sustainability when speaking with business people, but risk being disoriented by ‘Triple Bottom Line’ approaches that aim to shift the moral framework of business people. That’s the unwelcome conclusion I’ve come to after a conference for MBA graduates […]

14Mar2010 | Editorial | 1 comment | Continued
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Springboard buys Hydrasight to exploit Gartner’s relative weakness in emerging markets

Springboard Research, the Singapore-headquartered firm which has continued to grow through the last year, has bought Hydrasight, an upmarket analyst and consulting organisation based in Australia. Springboard’s allowed AnalystEquity to break its embargo and speak about it in advance of the formal announcement tomorrow (online here).
The two firms fit will together, with little redundancy between […]

4Mar2010 | Editorial | 1 comment | Continued
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How can we stop the decline of analyst relations?

There is a huge opportunity for vendors to benefit from the generalised decline in the responsiveness of analyst relations. Most vendors fail to act in the knowledge of the last year’s changes, creating huge benefits for those AR teams that fill the gap. That is the overwhelming tone of conversations with around two dozen analysts […]

26Feb2010 | Editorial | 1 comment | Continued