SAN JOSE, Calif. (November 19, 2014)—A cover story in the latest issue of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council’s quarterly digital magazine, PeerSphere, features highlights from interactions between CMOs and their IT counterparts at a recent CIO Perspectives event. Once again, this lively exchange reinforces the value of a more tightly integrated marketing/IT relationship.

Drawing on key themes and interviews at a CIO-CMO gathering in San Francisco, the cover story addresses a number of common perceptions—and misconceptions—around the CMO and CIO roles. It also provides insights on how to break down the barriers between these two functions in order to improve data usage, create better customer experiences, and maximize business performance.

According to the PeerSphere feature, marketing technologies and customer touchpoints are multiplying on a near-daily basis, creating dynamic new data streams that have to be sourced, sifted, unified and refined for insight, intelligence and personalized engagement. An effective partnership between marketing and IT is essential to this.

“Creating more marketing technology cohesion and less friction is critical to the promise and potential of a customer-centric enterprise,” notes the CMO Council’s Executive Director, Donovan Neale-May. “CMOs and CIOs have a great deal to gain from each other, and by creating better alignment, both functions stand to benefit from greater influence and authority in the organization.”

The latest issue of PeerSphere is available today and also features insights from global marketing executives at companies such as Twitter, Blue Shield of California, AtHome Group, Wesgro–South Africa and more. Among topics covered are:

• How Twitter is helping small and medium-size businesses capitalize on social media


• The importance of unifying disparate marketing technologies to maximize the value of customer data


• How companies can create better customer experiences through more social media-adept teams


• Why storytelling is key to helping your brand connect with consumers


• How integrating security into your event planning processes can help protect your brand

PeerSphere is available on a complimentary basis to CMO Council members courtesy of our sponsor, Thomson Reuters. For more information or to view the issue online, visit https://www.cmocouncil.org/peer-sphere.php.

About the CMO Council

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is the only global network of executives specifically 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 7,500-plus members control approximately $400 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 more than 35,000 global executives in more than 110 countries covering multiple industries, segments and markets.  Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, India and Africa. The council's strategic interest groups include the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE), Mobile Relationship Marketing (MRM) Strategies, LoyaltyLeaders.org, CMOCIOAlign.org, Marketing Supply Chain Institute, Customer Experience Board, Digital Marketing Performance Institute, GeoBranding Center and the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME). More information on the CMO Council is available at www.cmocouncil.org.