PALO ALTO, Calif. (August 22, 2006) — An authoritative panel of leading national retailers, distributors, value added resellers (VARs) and systems integrators will help senior technology marketers realize more value from the channel in a special session at 2006 Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Summit, to be held October 4-5 in San Francisco at the Four Seasons Hotel.

Dubbed “Gaining Channel Mind Share to Improve Market Share,” separate business and consumer-oriented tracks will include the following line-up of speakers:

• Donnie Gates, Client Executive -- Acxiom


• Fred Neil, VP Strategic Marketing -- CDW


• Phil Jacobs, EVP Corporate Marketing -- CompUSA


• Carol Kurimsky, SVP Marketing -- Ingram Micro


• Bob Thacker, SVP Marketing -- Office Max


• Harry Edwards, SVP Enterprise Business -- Synnex

The CMO Summit, sponsored by AT&T, CMP and Symantec, is the premier networking and thought leadership event for the CMO Council, an organization of some 2,500 senior marketing decision makers worldwide. Members across both the BtoB and BtoC market sectors control more than $60 billion in combined annual marketing expenditures.

Channels are critical and pivotal to powering customer engagement, closure and satisfaction. Unfortunately, strategic marketers are frequently out of sync with the channel and fail to design campaigns and market positioning strategies that embrace, excite and enable this critical partner constituency.

In a special warm-up event on Wednesday, Oct. 4 from 3:00-5:30 p.m. PST, panelists will provide pointers on how vendor marketers can grow deeper, more synergistic relationships with the channel, reduce conflict, enhance customer insight, and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of marketing spend.

The CMO Council Summit, celebrating its fifth year, will feature highly interactive panel discussions on such topics as customer equity, building a brand franchise, achieving high customer return, and more will be presented by a number of chief marketing executives from name-brand companies, including AT&T, Target, H&R Block, Myspace.com, National Hockey League and the U.S. Postal Service.

For more information on the CMO Council Summit or to register, please go to www.cmosummit.org. Summit attendees need to join the CMO Council first in order to attend this special event, and can nominate themselves at http://www.cmocouncil.org/nominations.html. There are no membership dues to join the Council; however applicants must hold a senior marketing position to meet eligibility requirements.

About the 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. More than 2,500 top marketing executives are represented on the CMO Council, accounting for well over $500 billion in aggregated annual revenues. Visit the CMO Council website to find out about the initiatives geared to address executive marketers’ challenges at www.cmocouncil.org.