In this episode
John Rockhold, VP Market Engagement at Spotlight, explains how analyst relations is changing now that B2B buyers research through ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini before they talk to a vendor. Recorded the week after the fourth Spotlight Summit in Kansas City, the conversation covers Gartner’s decision to stop accepting vendor-supplied Magic Quadrant references, why LLMs that cite Gartner are drawing mostly on Peer Insights reviews rather than analyst research, and why Spotlight dropped “AR” from the summit’s name in favor of influence orchestration. Rockhold also previews Spotlight’s Influence Orchestration report, which argues that influence now needs a dedicated leader, and the new Future of Influence Awards.
Key takeaways
- Influence orchestration is the deliberate coordination of everything that shapes how a vendor is perceived. Rockhold names customers, analysts, experts, influencers, communities, employees, and partners as the sources, and argues vendors need one centralized system to coordinate them.
- When LLMs cite Gartner, they are mostly citing Peer Insights, not the analysts. Gartner often ranks in the top five or ten sources for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, but the cited material is largely end-user reviews; Magic Quadrants show up mainly because vendors reprint them.
- A Magic Quadrant strategy without a Gartner Peer Insights strategy is incomplete. Gartner shut off vendor-supplied references for the MQ process and encourages analysts to use Peer Insights, which forces customer-reference owners and AR owners to work together.
- LLMs are not ending the analyst trade, but they are pressuring the subscription model. Paying for PDFs and waiting days or months for a 30-minute inquiry call compares poorly with on-demand AI synthesis.
- Owned content still matters, but earned content is gaining weight. Specs, pricing, mission, and history still count; what customers, analysts, and communities say about a vendor matters more over time, and Rockhold says data from sources like Profound, Semrush, and LinkedIn shows that trajectory.
- Influence needs a leader. Spotlight’s report proposes a VP of Influence or chief influence officer to own orchestration across analyst, customer, and expert relations.
- The buyer journey is no longer a journey vendors control. Rockhold describes it as a disordered map buyers move through on their own, which he calls a hard truth for vendors.
- AI synthesis is a real efficiency gain with a cost. Rockhold uses Claude to pull patterns from interview transcripts but still verifies the output and goes back to the source material so he keeps his own working knowledge.
Chapters
- 00:00 — Is your org chart for managing influence obsolete?
- 02:09 — What Spotlight does and how it defines influence orchestration
- 04:03 — Spotlight Summit in Kansas City: influence, advocacy, and visibility as the route to trust
- 05:55 — What changed for AR pros: LLMs and the Gartner, Forrester, and IDC subscription model
- 08:31 — Gartner drops vendor-supplied MQ references and Peer Insights takes their place
- 10:04 — AI-led buyer research: the upside and the downside
- 13:01 — How AI search changes the AR role: LLMs cite Peer Insights, not analysts
- 15:57 — From Spotlight AR Summit to Spotlight Summit: why “AR” was dropped
- 18:17 — Influence Orchestration report preview: defining influence, influence leadership, owned vs. earned
- 21:27 — The Future of Influence Awards: categories, judging, and timeline
- 23:43 — One year from now: influence orchestration leaders in practice
- 24:44 — Staying agile through six Spotlight on the Road events
Why LLMs cite Gartner Peer Insights, not Gartner analysts
Rockhold says that when you examine how often ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini cite various sources, Gartner regularly lands near the top, but the cited material is not analyst research. Magic Quadrants appear because vendors reprint them, and the models favor the categories and frameworks that MQs, Waves, and MarketScapes provide. The specific evidence, though, comes largely from Gartner Peer Insights: a typical answer names category leaders “per the Magic Quadrant” and then references a specific end user’s review of the platform the buyer asked about.
Why a Magic Quadrant now needs a Peer Insights strategy
A few years ago Gartner stopped letting vendors supply their own references for the Magic Quadrant process. It doesn’t require analysts to use Peer Insights, but it encourages them to. Rockhold’s conclusion is blunt: if you want to get into an MQ or do better in one and you don’t have a Peer Insights strategy, you’re doing it wrong. That shift pulls the owners of customer references and the owners of analyst relationships into much closer collaboration than they had before.
Are LLMs replacing industry analysts?
Rockhold doesn’t think generative AI will destroy the analyst trade, but it is raising hard questions about the legacy research-firm model of paying for report access and inquiry calls that can take days or months to schedule. He points to market skepticism about that model, noting that Gartner’s stock took a hit even as the company reports record revenue, and that Forrester has had its own struggles. Combined with analyst turnover and the Peer Insights change, he describes the past two years for AR pros as a mix of excitement and trepidation.
Owned content still matters, but earned content matters more
Across six Spotlight on the Road events this year, the recurring theme was owned versus earned content. Rockhold’s read is that what a vendor says about itself (product specs, pricing, mission, history) still matters. What third parties say, whether customers, analysts, or communities, is gaining weight, whether the vendor quotes them or they point to the vendor. Spotlight’s Influence Orchestration report examines that shift.
Why influence needs a dedicated leader
Spotlight’s report asks what makes one analyst more influential than another in an era of generative AI, and then asks who should lead influence inside a vendor. Its answer is a VP of Influence or even a chief influence officer. Rockhold expects that within a year the conversation will move from early signs of this role to many examples of leaders combining influencer relations, expert relations, customer engagement, and analyst relations, and seeing that consistency in what third parties say pays off in AI visibility and in the trust buyers give it.
FAQ
What is influence orchestration? Influence orchestration is Spotlight’s term for deliberately coordinating the people and sources that shape how a vendor is perceived, including customers, analysts, experts, influencers, communities, employees, and partners. Rockhold argues it requires a centralized system rather than separate, siloed programs.
When ChatGPT or Claude cites Gartner, what are they citing? According to Rockhold, mostly Gartner Peer Insights reviews from real users, not Gartner analyst research. Magic Quadrants appear in AI answers largely because vendors reprint them.
Why does Gartner Peer Insights matter for the Magic Quadrant? Gartner stopped accepting vendor-supplied references for the Magic Quadrant process and encourages its analysts to use Peer Insights instead. Rockhold says any vendor trying to get into or improve in an MQ needs a Peer Insights strategy.
Will generative AI replace industry analysts? Rockhold doesn’t think so, but he says LLMs are putting pressure on the traditional research-firm model of paid report access and slow-to-schedule analyst inquiry calls.
Does owned content still matter for AI visibility? Yes. Rockhold says product specs, pricing, mission, and history still matter, but earned content from customers, analysts, and communities is becoming more important over time.
What are the Spotlight Future of Influence Awards? A new annual program with five categories: three for teams (Category Makers, Precision Advocacy, Credibility Compounders) and two for individuals (the Future of Influence Award and the Influence Orchestration Champion Award). An independent panel of judges picks the winners, which Spotlight plans to announce in a mid-November digital town hall.
About John Rockhold
John Rockhold is VP of Market Engagement at Spotlight, an influence orchestration agency rooted in analyst relations. His background spans journalism, analyst relations, and years of close collaboration with industry analysts. His work focuses on how influence, visibility, and trust are earned in the modern B2B buyer journey, synthesizing signals from analysts, buyer research, and market behavior, and helping B2B brands understand how experts, customers, vendors, partners, and employees shape visibility and credibility. Spotlight calls this coordinated approach to earning trust across analysts, customers, and AI systems Influence Orchestration.
Resources
This episode is brought to you by Spotlight. Spotlight is pioneering the future of influence orchestration in the B2B buyer journey. Trusted by over 165 teams globally, Spotlight is the world’s leading analyst relations consultancy and industry platform.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Greg Kihlström: Hi, I’m Greg Kihlström, host of The Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you. With analyst relations, investor relations, and influencer marketing all starting to look a little more alike, is your org chart for managing influence completely obsolete? Agility requires not just adapting to new channels, but fundamentally rethinking how we structure our teams to manage influence in a unified way. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome John Rockhold, VP Market Engagement at Spotlight. John, welcome to the show.
[00:01:22] John Rockhold: Hey, Greg. Happy to be here.
[00:01:24] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. Looking forward to, to diving in, and great to see you, in, in Kansas City at Spotlight Summit. So I, I know we’re gonna talk quite a bit about that here. [laughs]
[00:01:34] John Rockhold: you tell me, what’d you think? Was it a great experience?
[00:01:37] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, definitely. I… It was great to, great to be able to see everybody and, and talk and, and just, it’s, it’s good to be able to just share. Things move so quickly. It’s, it’s good to be able to talk with everybody about not only what’s happening in the moment, but kind of taking a, taking a step back and, and looking at what’s happened in the last year. So having both of those perspectives at once I thought was really, really valuable so before we dive in more, why don’t, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Spotlight?
[00:02:09] John Rockhold: Yeah. Spotlight is a influence orchestration agency. we’ve been around for 14 years. Our pedigree is analyst relations, but in recent years we’ve, expanded our wings beyond that. it… Influence orchestration is about the deliberate coordination and shaping of the myriad of things that influence the perception, the s- understanding, the awareness of vendors in today’s era of visibility, which is, more and more driven by what the robots pick up and what the robots synthesize to answer questions for humans. So, influence orchestration is very much, sparked by the new era
[00:02:54] John Rockhold: of visibility and LLMs, generative AI, but it’s very much rooted in humans. So your customers, your analysts, your experts, your influencers, your communities, even your employees and your partners, all of those people, all of those entities play a role in creating the perception, the understanding, of you as a vendor. And we believe that more than ever, vendors need a centralized effort, a system to orchestrate their influence. So, that’s Spotlight in a, in a nutshell. We work with vendors large and small and everything in between, household names, also up-and-comers that are f- in the very early startup phases. my role
[00:03:39] John Rockhold: is to spread the good word of how we see the world evolving, how our clients are, conquering and doing well, what the analysts see, what the analysts believe, how we can be better partners to them. so my role is really to, be that, mouthpiece or, content engine, all those kind of things.
[00:04:03] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. Nice, love it. So yeah, let- let’s dive in here. And as I mentioned, we were, we were both at Spotlight Summit last week in Kansas City, and at the pretty awesome, Hotel Kansas City, so lo- love the-
[00:04:17] Greg Kihlström: … the overall vibe there and everything. why don’t you give us a sense of… As I, as I said, it’s a great chance to not only see what’s going on in the moment, but also take a look back and, and see how-
[00:04:35] John Rockhold: Yeah. step one, for a great event, have a great venue, and we-
[00:04:39] Greg Kihlström: That’s right
[00:04:40] John Rockhold: … wow, the Hotel Kansas City is an incredible place. but the theme, the North Star, the, the guiding light for our event was this combination of influence, advocacy, and visibility, which we believe those three things coming together creates trust. And that’s not just trust with your analysts, not just trust with your customers, it’s also trust with your peers, and your colleagues, and your stakeholders who you’re trying to rally internally to meet the moment, meet this opportunity. So for me, the theme really was awesome to see manifest in the way people were talking and engaging. a lot of analyst relations
[00:05:25] John Rockhold: pros, are a team of one or a team of two, and so when they get together in person, that’s a really valuable experience for them. in the room was mostly AR pros, but a lot of influencer relations, customer engagement pros, some analysts. So but regardless of what their, day jobs are, they all came together and there was a great sense of community, a lot of just chatter and, and, and, and sharing. That was, that was really fantastic to see.
[00:05:55] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. So, so in the, in the world of the, the analyst relations professional what, what has changed over the last year or so and, I know you, you touched a little bit on how AI and LLMs are affecting things, but, what, what are some of the overall things that are really changing in that, in their, in their world?
[00:06:15] John Rockhold: Yeah. It’s been tumultuous, to be honest. It’s been exciting, it’s been terrifying, and everything in between. you have, the rise of generative AI, of LLMs, and how that is or is not displacing the analyst. there’s a lot of debate about will LLMs, will ChatGPT, will that destroy the analyst trade? And, and I’m here to say I, no, I don’t think it will, but it is certainly casting new questions on the legacy model of the Gartners and the Foresters and the IDCs of the world, where, you pay a subscription to be able to access PDFs, and you pay a subscription to be able to talk to an analyst via inquiry,
[00:07:00] John Rockhold: and often, you’re waiting, sometimes days, sometimes months for that phone call, and it’s a 30-minute, almost like a intellectual speed dating call. Um-
[00:07:12] Greg Kihlström: Right
[00:07:12] John Rockhold: … you may get great insights. You may skim the surface. It just depends. So the accessibility, the democratization of information that’s happening via LLMs and ChatGPT and generative AI and all those things, has really caused a lot of hubbub, in some corners, enthusiasm, in some corners, dread about the future of the analyst and the future of therefore the analyst relations pro. On top of all that, Gartner had a massive punch in the gut for its stock price, and I don’t wanna conflate stock price with, performance of the company, ’cause on the other hand, Gartner’s making more money than it ever has. but you know,
[00:07:57] John Rockhold: the market is dubious about the future, or at least, at least skeptical, at least curious about the future of this legacy model of research firms. Forrester’s had its struggles. there’s only, there’s only two or three of them that are public. and also the other big change that’s been slowly happening, even before the arrival of ChatGPT, happened when Gartner, a few years ago by now, Gartner shut off vendor-supplied references for the Magic Quadrant process.
[00:08:31] John Rockhold: So the long tradition of the vendor supplying their own references for the analyst to talk to, Gartner shut that off in the interest of efficiency and also as a shrewd move, where they, didn’t require, don’t require, but they sort of suggest and encourage their analysts leverage the information that’s in Gartner Peer Insights, which is a section of Gartner devoted to, software reviews from real people, and so they encouraged the analysts to use that, and that really changed the game b- as far as collaboration between customer department and analyst relations department. those two would occasionally collaborate in the past, given analysts’ great interest in talking to customers
[00:09:17] John Rockhold: and the need for references for things like the Magic Quadrant. But now, if you care about being in, in an MQ, if you are in an MQ, if you wanna do better in an MQ, if you wanna get into an MQ, and you don’t have a Gartner Peer Insights strategy, you’re doing it wrong. it requires much more collaboration between the longstanding stakeholders, owners of the customer references, and the owners of the analyst relationships.
[00:09:47] John Rockhold: So it’s just been a lot. It’s been a lot. and we’ve seen, many analysts retire, many analysts, come and go, which is normal, but it just, it’s just been a lot for the AR pro the past couple years. like I said, a mixture of excitement and trepidation.
[00:10:04] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think the, I, I didn’t, I wasn’t completely aware of the, the Peer Insights dynamic there, but it’s, it, it, that’s completely separate from, to your point, completely separate from the LLMs and, and everything like that, but certainly, kind of a, kind of a big, a, a big change there. But the o- the other thing, th- the obvious thing here is, and I know there was a lot of talk at the, at the conference about this too, is just how not only the buying cycle but the research cycle has just fundamentally changed. I mean, the way that people are looking for things, so much is being done now. there was always googling being done and, and things like that, throughout the, throughout the process, but now,
[00:10:49] Greg Kihlström: you can, you can get what seems like, and I’ll, I’ll just say seems like, what seems like some pretty in-depth research from Claude or ChatGPT, Gemini, things like that, before ever talking with anyone. from, from your perspective and, and from what you’re hearing in the industry, like, what’s, what’s the good part of this, and then what’s the not good part of, of kind of AI stepping in as, as deeply as they have?
[00:11:15] John Rockhold: well, I mean, the good is the ability to have a robot, Claude or Gemini or whoever it is, synthesize for you vast quantities of information that would’ve taken you hours, days, weeks-
[00:11:32] John Rockhold: … to do. I mean, I can think back to research projects even just two, three years ago where I was synthesizing, analyzing, a dozen interviews and how much more time that took than what it does now when I ask Claude to give me the key takeaways, give me the patterns. Now, I still verify, I still check, but just the sheer heavy lifting of scrutinizing all those transcripts, all those notes is-
[00:12:00] John Rockhold: … phenomenal.
[00:12:01] John Rockhold: so the time save, it’s not, but it’s not just time saved, it’s- It’s a radical efficiency in how much information you can, absorb. Um-
[00:12:15] John Rockhold: … the downside is, I mean, you lose… I, I even feel it myself sometimes when, I’m working on a report and it’s like I, th- the, the, my level of familiarity with the in- granular stuff is not quite as good as I think maybe it could be, should be. And so then I catch myself and I go, “Okay, I need to dive back into that and get reacquainted with it,” because I don’t, I don’t wanna have just the robot telling me what to think. So, it’s a classic, tug of war between efficiency, and, lack of in-depth, permanent knowledge.
[00:13:01] Greg Kihlström: So, if you’re a, an analyst relations or, as, as Spotlight’s been talking about the influence orchestrator, orchestration role, what is, you, you’re not just interfacing with the analysts anymore, right? Like, what is, how does, how does showing up on AI search and, and the LLMs, how does that evolve the role of the analyst relations professional?
[00:13:27] John Rockhold: Well, it, it goes back to our earlier discussion. one example, it goes back to our earlier discussion about Gartner. as you mentioned, that decision by Gartner did happen years, two years-ish before the arrival of ChatGPT, but the robots love customer reviews. [laughs]
[00:13:46] John Rockhold: when you dig into the data about how much ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini, et cetera, are citing various sources, Gartner’s often in the top five, top 10. But guess what? It’s not, it’s not the Gartner analysts.
[00:14:01] John Rockhold: the MQs are in there because vendors reprint them, and the robots like the, sort of the taxonomy, the categorization, the frameworks that MQs and Waves and Marketscapes and such provide. But when you look at the Gartner data, it’s largely coming from Gartner Peer Insights. So you, what we see is the robot will say in its response, “End users trust so and so, so and so, and so and so in this category per the Gartner Magic Quadrant.” So it’s making that broad statement, and then it’ll go on to reference or maybe even quote a specific user who’s written about that platform that you, the user, are, are inquiring
[00:14:47] John Rockhold: about. So if, if the number one search mode m- in, is now or is about to be soon, you can debate… I mean, Google, classic Google is still very much alive, don’t get me wrong.
[00:14:59] John Rockhold: But there’s no question that people are using LLMs more than ever before. There’s all kinds of stats out there about it’s the number one tool, the number one trusted, most efficient, all those things. So whether it’s number one now or later or sooner or later, it’s gonna, it’s gonna be number one. If what the robots synthesize is different than what an analyst relations pro is used to being the case from search, from visibility, then the game has changed dramatically. I mean, you mentioned the buyer journey. Buyer journey is not really a journey anymore. It’s a [laughs] it’s a helter-skelter map that buyers traverse, and vendors don’t have control of it anymore.
[00:15:38] John Rockhold: And that’s a hard truth for vendors to swallow, but it is the truth. so yeah, it-
[00:15:45] John Rockhold: … visibility and what’s trusted to drive visibility and what the visibility drivers trust as sources has all changed in even just, a year.
[00:15:57] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. And so this was, the fourth Spotlight Summit, is that?
[00:16:03] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. So, just curious, what, what have you seen kind of evolve even, even at this event? Again, you get a chance to bring a lot of people into the, into the same room talking about things. what, what have you seen about who was there, what their roles are, what maybe they’re focused on and, and even concerns about?
[00:16:25] John Rockhold: Right. Well, to, to our discussion, years one through three, it was called Spotlight AR Summit.
[00:16:33] John Rockhold: Analyst Relations Summit. This year, we intentionally dropped the AR from it because we see AR growing to something different, evolved, bigger. last year, we debuted our concept of influence orchestration. This year, I’d like to think we made it real. We talked about it in much more detail. We had examples. I mean, nearly every speaker spoke to the themes of it. so the point was to still be inclusive of the AR community, absolutely, and the majority of people who were there were, are AR pros, but we wanted to send a deliberate signal that this is, event is about more than the traditional AR as it, as it’s been
[00:17:18] John Rockhold: known. so to your question, I mean, years one, year two, it was very much, classic, spend more time with analysts, learn from analysts. How do we do better in a Magic Quadrant? How do we juggle, multiple evaluation reports? How do we, this, these, these customer review things, what do, do they matter?
[00:17:40] Greg Kihlström: Right. [laughs]
[00:17:40] John Rockhold: You know? [laughs] it was very much, insights driven analyst relations was the themes of year one and two, and then year three was like, things are changing. and we, it was early. We, we knew things were changing. We knew enough to know that, there was this new concept to be considered, and so we debuted it, but it did not dominate the agenda. This year, trust, influence, visibility, advocacy- And thus, influence orchestration dominated the whole agenda.
[00:18:17] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. Love it. And I know we’re gonna have you back on the show to talk in more depth about the future of influence, well, the, the influencer orchestration report, we’ll talk about that in depth. Lots of great insights in there and, and things, so we’ll, we’ll actually spend a whole show talking about that. But I do, maybe, maybe give us a, a teaser for, what, what are some things to look forward in that. The report’s already available, so you can, you can download it, but what, what are some things to look out for in that report?
[00:18:47] John Rockhold: Yeah, we published this report first to Summit attendees, they got it at check-in. And the report, the, the genesis of it was a couple things. One, we wanted to revisit the question that w- that we at Spotlight have been asked, I mean, hundreds if not thousands of times, “What is influence?”
[00:19:09] John Rockhold: “What makes analyst X more influential than analyst Y?” And we wanted to revisit those questions, in this era of generative AI, LLMs, and whatnot. that’s a hard question to answer, [laughs] for a variety of reasons we’ll get into next time.
[00:19:27] John Rockhold: But we tried our best to revisit the nature of influence. Second question that we considered and drove the report was, what is the future of influence leadership? and we debuted, I’m sure we’ll talk about next time, this concept of a VP of Influence, or maybe even a chief influence officer, you know? there’s all kinds of ways it could manifest, but because we believe influence orchestration is a thing that needs to happen, we also believe it needs a leader, and that’s the second thing that drove, the report, was to talk about the nature of the leadership of influence. And then yet one more that I’m thinking of, a bonus, a third thing that really sparked the report,
[00:20:12] John Rockhold: was to answer the question of owned versus earned. we spent, we had, six Spotlight on the Road events this year, and the theme across those was discussing your owned content versus your earned content. And those conversations, plus the data we see coming from Profound and Semrush and LinkedIn and the, a myriad of sources, signals to us that owned still matters. what you say about yourself, your product specs, your pricing, your mission, your history, it still matters, but more and more moving forward, we think that what they say, and by they I mean your customers, your analysts, communities, third parties,
[00:20:58] John Rockhold: what they say, thus your earned content, your earned reputation, whether it’s you quoting them or they pointing to you, that earned is gonna matter more and more moving forward, and the data shows that trajectory happening. So, those were the three things we examined in the report, and looking forward to discussing them next time. we also at our event announced our Future of Influence Awards, which I’m really-
[00:21:25] John Rockhold: … excited about.
[00:21:27] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah, why don’t you tell us a little bit about those?
[00:21:30] John Rockhold: So, we talk about third-party attribution, third-party, validation, third-party visibility, and so it occurred to us as we see many people and our clients trailblazing in this topic, it occurred to us that we should provide a degree of validation, uh-
[00:21:50] John Rockhold: … to those people who are, blazing that trail, making change happen, innovating and figuring things out. So, we kicked off what we call the Future of Influence Awards. It’s, five categories. Three are for teams, and two are for individuals. So, they’re open now. The applications close in a couple weeks, mid-October, and then we will announce the winners in a, a digital town hall webinar in mid-November, get that in before the holidays arrive. I’m sure we’ll give a link to your Agile Brand Nation, in the show notes or whatever, but-
[00:22:34] John Rockhold: … the categories range from the Category Makers Award, the Precision Advocacy Award, the Credibility Compounders Award. Those are the three for teams. And then there’s two for, one we call the Future of Influence Award, and the other is the IO, Influence Orchestration, Champion Award. So, five total. these will not be picked by us. We have a panel of judges. A handful of them were speakers at our event, third parties, experts ranging from, B2B pros to analysts. so we will, of course, coalesce, aggregate all the nominations and hand them over to our
[00:23:19] John Rockhold: judges, and we will see who gets picked. And we’re super excited to see the results of it and make this an annual thing.
[00:23:27] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Love it. Love it. Well, yeah, we’ll, we’ll definitely put a link in the, in the show notes to that as well. Well, John, thanks so much for joining today, and yeah, looking forward to talking more about the report on, on the next episode, but, until then, got a couple last questions for you as we wrap up here.
[00:23:43] Greg Kihlström: First one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
[00:23:49] John Rockhold: So one year from today, hmm. well, I would hope it would land, after another great successful Spotlight Summit, and I would hope that we’d be talking about a great event. But more than that, more than just that, we’d be talking about how much the conversation has moved in a year, from, early signs of influence orchestration leadership to, a cacophony of examples of influence orchestration leaders, people who are bringing together- Influencer relations, expert relations, customer engagement, analyst relations, people who are bringing that all together and seeing that when they create, consistency out there, what, of what they say about the vendor-
[00:24:35] John Rockhold: … that it really pays off in terms of the visibility for that vendor with the robots a- and then the trust that humans give to it.
[00:24:44] Greg Kihlström: Love it. Love it. And last question for you, what do you do to stay agile in your role, and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[00:24:51] John Rockhold: I think the nature of the beast [laughs] sort of makes me stay agile one way or another given how much change is constantly happening. But, I kind of teased it earlier, this year I’ve been fortunate. We had six Spotlight on the Roads, and then the, the one summit here in Kansas City. So Seattle, New York, Boston, Chicago, Austin, and San Francisco. And so you get out there and you see clients face to face, you see various experts face to face, you see people have discussions, banter, best practice sharing. and then, those were small bespoke events. We’d get 30 to 50 people attend those, and then we have our big event here in Kansas City. And just, just seeing the reactions of people coming together, not just socially, but professionally in terms of sharing and caring, that really makes me stay agile and stay on my toes ’cause it’s just so exciting to see that happening.
