PALO ALTO, CA (October 30, 2006) – The CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) Council, a global network of senior marketing executives, hosted its inaugural Asia-Pacific CMO gathering, The CMO Council Asia Pacific Virtual Tokyo Symposium, at the Tokyo America Club, on October 24, 2006. The event, themed “ East Meets West; Connecting Across Cultures, drew marketers from across the Asia Pacific region, including Tokyo, Singapore, Shanghai, Taiwan, Seoul, and Hong Kong, and was also simulcast live on the Web.

Themed “ East Meets West; Connecting Across Cultures,” the Asia-Pacific CMO Council Virtual Tokyo Symposium featured, as speakers and panelists, top-level marketers from leading global companies, including AT&T, Factiva, Symantec, Salesforce.com, Tektronix and BearingPoint, among others, offering in-person and Web attendees the opportunity to interact with and gain best practices insight from some of the world’s most accomplished marketing professionals. The event was sponsored by global CMO Council partners AT&T, CMP Technology and Symantec, together with Asia Pacific partner, Bearing Point, Ltd., Japan.

The CMO Council is a knowledge sharing organization of more than 2,600 senior marketing decision makers across a variety of industries. CMO Council members control more than $60 billion in combined annual marketing expenditures and represent most major global brands, including Toyota, Apple, Coca-Cola, Dell, eBay, Google, HP, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, MasterCard, Microsoft, Nintendo, Nokia, Oracle, SAP, Sony, Target, Wal-Mart, Yahoo! and many more. The CMO Council launched its Asia Pacific chapter earlier this year and already counts over 100 members, from countries including: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Australia, and New Zealand.

The Virtual Symposium Tokyo event began with a press conference at the Foreign Press Club. Executive Director Donovan Neale-May, CMO Council Asia Pacific Advisory Board chairman Jun Kamo of BearingPoint, Japan, and fellow Advisory Board member Charles Nikeil, senior director, regional marketing, Symantec, presented the assembled regional media with perspective on the CMO Council’s entry into the region and the business value proposition it offers to senior marketers and their organizations.

“We are quite excited with the reception the CMO Council is receiving throughout the region,” said Neale-May. “The role of marketing is undergoing a massive transformation across Asia, becoming more important in the corporate hierarchy, more metrics-driven and more focused on strategic imperatives. As a result, the role of the marketer is taking on new importance in the organization and the CMO Council, as we have proven in North America and Europe, can be a strong partner for senior marketing executives in Asia Pacific in helping them leverage their larger marketing initiatives with complementary authority leadership programs, knowledge exchange and business-to-business positioning.”

The keynote presentation was delivered by Martin Roll, CEO of VentureRepublic and author of Asian Brand Strategy, who has spent the last fifteen years closely analyzing the evolution of the marketing function in Asia and studying Asia brands and branding strategies and communicating the attendant opportunities and challenges to Western marketers. Among his key points: successful brands must be managed by the top level of management – which must include a senior marketing executive – and implemented by the entire organization through multiple actions, behaviors and customer touch points.

Panels on “Pipeline to the Frontline: Integration and Alignment of Marketing & Sales” and “Market Entry and Growth Strategies for Asia” featured informative discussions from CMO Council Asia Pacific Advisory Board members including: James Alderton, marketing director, Tektronix, June Chan, vice president, marketing, AT&T; Simone Wheeler, marketing director, Factiva; and Jeremy Cooper, vice president, salesforce.com. The panelists offered attendees – who included a mix of local Japanese businesses, regional brands and multinationals -- a breadth and depth of knowledge and insight into the complexities of marketing across such a diverse range of cultures, economies, and business mindsets.

The CMO Council Asia Pacific Advisory Board also convened to develop a strategic focus for 2007. The members identified a number of topics and issues most compelling to marketers around the region and which the Council will evaluate in developing thought leadership initiatives, on-line programs and forums to introduce to members in the coming year. Among these include: better alignment of the sales & marketing functions the organization; professional development for mid-level marketing personnel; elevation of marketing as a strategic function within the organization; and clearly defining the role of the CMO in the Asia Pacific region.

The 2006 Asia-Pacific CMO Symposium is the second of three in the CMO Council Global Summit Series that also include the North American CMO Summit in San Francisco Oct. 4-5 and the European CMO Summit in London Nov. 15-16. For more information go to www.cmosummit.org.

About CMO Council
The CMO Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior marketing and brand decision-makers across a wide range of global industries. Currently, over 2,500 top marketing executives are represented on the CMO Council worldwide, collectively controlling over $60 billion in annual marketing expenditures. Visit the CMO Council web site at www.cmocouncil.org to learn more about the initiatives created to address executive marketers’ challenges.