Define independence

Three events this last week have got me thinking about independence in opinion, analysis and commentary.

1. Butler’s acquisition by Gartner and subsequent podcast where I appeared alongside Jonathan Yarmis, Naomi Higgins and Jonny Bentwood
2. Bruce Richardson’s departure to the ‘dark side’ in joining Infor as Chief Strategy Officer
3. Sage Circle’s broad dismissal of blog influence in negotiations

On the podcast, I said that further consolidation represents a reduction of choice but an opportunity for the boutique groups to enjoy a differentiated position in the market. Bruce’s exit may, or may not mean an opening up at Infor. The fact he believes that Infor ‘gets’ the importance of the customer would suggest improved transparency. Sage Circle’s assessment that the traditional analysts (for which read largely Gartner/Forrester) drew comment from Frank, Vinnie and myself. Vinnie’s challenge is interesting:

If you want a serious comparison compare analyst blogs to those of independent blogs, and compare analyst advisory services to those of independent advisory firms.

Organize a shoot out and a few of us independents will show. On one condition – if we kick ass, we will be written a fair piece of those billions analyst firms charge.

While he doesn’t say it out loud, I’m thinking that the defining characteristics that differentiates the independents are:

• the degree to which they are transparent in their dealings,
• the amount they are prepared to give away through their online writings and
• the extent to which they are prepared to challenge the status quo.

If this sounds like an attempt to take some sort of perceived moral high ground then you’d be right. Too often I see mild mannered, uncritical, PR driven material that provides little of real value to the buyer community. Most often it sounds like the ‘Crowd’ playing to both itself and the vendors that pay for the advertising that supports much of today’s media. You see that in the incessant Tweeting and re-Tweeting of anything that references something where there is an implied relationship. Heck – I’ve been guilty of that myself. It leads to all sorts of self serving ’stuff.’ It’s all good for the page views but does it actually count for anything? Does it mean anything for buyers?

When you look at the Twitter crowd for example, where are the technology buyers or decision makers? Apart from the CIO Dashboard list, I don’t know. Perhaps all that means is that as a channel to reach enterprise buyers, Twitter is of limited value. I do however know that it is a worthwhile channel for reaching developers. Quite how much influence they have is moot and worthy of another post.

But what do you think? Have I got this definitional set of characteristics right?

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Tagged as: Public relations, Twitter