As an analyst, you often gets asked and paid to provide press release quotes (see some of mine here, though the I haven’t been good at saving all of them). Yes, press releases are still widely done and used. As someone who write-up the tech world happenings, I actually find them handy. Knowing how a vendor talks about themselves is actually important for analyst work, and the good press releases are more like media kits that line up all the relevant facts and links to other sources…and there’s all the bad stuff too, that’s still floating around.

So, as an analyst, how do I do press release quotes?

In general (meaning I don’t always do this) I try not to reference the vendor in my press release quotes. Instead, if I believe it to be the case, I try to follow a format that points out the problem the vendor is solving and then say something along the lines of “there’s clearly market desire for products that address this problem” type of thing. However, if I truly believe that the product/vendor in question is somehow awesome (and, esp. if they have a track record) I’ll reference them directly.

Put another way: I try to make most of my press release quotes into just validating the problem the vendor is working on, and, if real, that there’s market potential there.

(And, yes, if the news, vendor, etc. in particular is BS, I don’t just stand there and say “this BS is awesome!” That can be a tricky situation.)