An AR agency of record is an external firm retained to run or support a company's analyst relations program, distinct from a PR agency and from the analyst firms themselves.
Scope commonly includes calendar management, briefing coordination, evaluation project management, submission drafting and coverage monitoring.
Three things that are not the same
An AR agency works for you across the analyst landscape. A PR agency with an AR practice may do the same work with a communications rather than an evaluation orientation. An analyst firm's vendor-side advisory service works for you while being paid by the firm whose analysts assess you.
All three are legitimate. They have different incentives, and the third has an obvious structural one.
Why it matters
Outsourcing the calendar and the logistics is straightforward and often sensible. Outsourcing the positioning is where programs quietly converge on whatever the agency tells all its clients.
The result is a market in which several competing vendors are briefed by the same people, using the same frame, into the same analysts — and then compete on which of them said it more fluently.
Related: Analyst-turned-vendor · Vendor briefing document · Client-side vs. vendor-side analyst
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