PALO ALTO, Calif. (April 20, 2010) –The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council has announced the date and theme of its annual CMO Summit (www.cmosummit.org), to be held December 9, 2010 in San Francisco / Bay Area, CA. The Summit theme will address the need for the CMO to be a catalyst in Synchronizing the C-Suite as a key element in advancing customer experience, marketing effectiveness, and operational efficiency worldwide.

The announcement of the theme and direction for the ninth annual CMO Summit comes close on the heels of the release of the CMO Council’s 2010 State of Marketing Report. This year’s audit of over 600 global marketers indicates there will be a new emphasis on marketing organization realignment and restructuring to sharpen focus, drive top-line growth, increase market share, and improve budgetary control.

Among other key findings, the State of Marketing report also revealed that:

• 46 percent of those surveyed will be investing in digital demand generation and online relationship building to maximize the impact and value of marketing in 2010


• Another 38 percent say they are exploring alternative media and new routes to market


• 62 percent will be crunching customer data to improve segmentation and targeting

This year's elite retreat will center on where and how chief marketers can improve collaboration with CIO, CFO, COO and CSO stakeholders. This is particularly vital given the growing embrace and value of digital marketing practices, shifts to customer data-driven strategies and campaigns, as well as adoption of new marketing process integration platforms and dashboards for greater visibility, control and accountability.

"The digital marketing mix is exploding and customer touch points and distribution channels have become very technology dependent,” noted stated Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. “The purchasing and after-market experience is often the key determinant of customer satisfaction and brand differentiation. This requires marketing, sales, supply chains, back office, customer support and service to operate in-sync in delivering on the promise of the brand and the expectation of the market," he added.

With headline sponsorship from Accenture and Jigsaw Networks, the CMO Council’s 2010 CMO Summit will gather keynote speakers and panelists from across the C-Suite to share their knowledge, insights and best practices in three key areas of business performance: Customer Experience, Marketing Effectiveness and Operational Efficiency.  The two-day event will include keynote addresses from C-Suite leaders who will shed light on how marketing can better connect and derive value from a tighter coupling with critical operational areas across the enterprise. This includes IT, finance, legal, compliance/governance, procurement, product development, supply/demand chain management, distribution, logistics, and after-market services.

The CMO Council Summit (www.cmosummit.org) is the premier networking and thought leadership event in marketing and the official peer-to-peer networking event for the CMO Council (www.cmocouncil.org), an organization of more than 5,000 global marketers, controlling more than $150 billion in combined annual marketing spend. Delegates from across both the B-to-B and B-to-C market sectors will be invited to attend this exclusive retreat to network with peers and tap into this global network of insight, access and influence.

For more information about the CMO Council Summit, please visit www.cmosummit.org. Attendance to the North America Summit is by invitation-only, and while membership in the CMO Council is not required for attendance, member requests will have priority handling for this gathering. Senior marketers can be nominated for membership.

To request an invitation to the CMO Summit, visit http://www.cmosummit.org/2010/invitation_request.asp.

To learn more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Bryan DeRose (bderose@cmocouncil.org).

To submit a proposal to speak at the CMO Summit or for any other inquiries, please contact Liz Miller (lmiller@cmocouncil.org).

About the CMO Council
The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries. The CMO Council's 5,000 members control more than $150 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic interest communities include over 12,000 global executives across 100 countries in multiple industries, segments and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. The Council's strategic interest groups include the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE), Marketing Supply Chain Institute, Customer Experience Board, LoyaltyLeaders.org, Online Marketing Performance Institute, and the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME). www.cmocouncil.org