CMO COUNCIL AND BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP LAUNCH GLOBAL RESEARCH INITIATIVE FOCUSED ON GO-TO-MARKET CAPABILITIES

Thought-Leadership Program Will Highlight Best Practices to Help Multinational Companies Enhance Marketing and Sales Effectiveness

PALO ALTO, CA; NEW YORK, NY (September 8, 2007) – The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) today announced the launch of a global research initiative focused on helping multinational companies improve the design and execution of their go-to-market strategies.

Entitled Driving the Bottom Line From the Front Line, the program is one of the first international studies of its kind. Research with senior marketing and sales officers will explore the critical determinants of how companies build capabilities to deliver marketing and sales results in a repeatable and systematic manner.

“Global corporations have invested heavily across the value chain to bring products and services to market as efficiently and effectively as possible,” notes Miki Tsusaka, a Senior Partner and Global Leader of BCG’s Marketing and Sales practice. “Yet many still struggle with how best to integrate and align their sales, marketing and channel organizations to optimize top-line growth and improve bottom-line returns at the same time. 

“Without question, many companies are challenged in this area,” Ms. Tsusaka adds. “This BCG-CMO Council research program has a dual objective: to highlight the most pressing obstacles to go-to-market success and to identify the capabilities necessary for actionable and sustainable solutions.”

The Driving the Bottom Line From the Front Line program will encompass in-depth qualitative and quantitative research. Respondents will include Chief Marketing Officers and Chief Sales/Commercial Officers in large multinational enterprises with a minimum of $1 billion in annual revenues. The findings of the study will be released this fall.

A distinguished group of industry leaders, analysts and business-school educators will be assembled to form a special Advisory Board that offers evaluative insights on the findings. Leading sales and marketing trade associations will also contribute to the program from a data-collection and -analysis perspective.

“This BCG-CMO Council program will be a landmark study that addresses an increasingly vital component of corporate strategy and business planning,” notes Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council. “Empowering frontline sales and marketing teams with better customer analytics, insights, market segmentation, messaging and engagement programs increases the efficiency and effectiveness of spend, while having significant top-line and bottom-line impact. The CMO Council is proud to be teaming with BCG to explore these and other critical areas that determine go-to-market excellence and how companies build these capabilities.”

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 marketing and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries. The CMO Council’s 3,000 members control more than $70 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures. Companies represented on the CMO Council have combined annual revenue of over $600 billion.  Visit the CMO Council web site to find out about the initiatives geared to address executive marketers’ challenges at www.cmocouncil.org.

About The Boston Consulting Group
The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is a global management consulting firm and the world's leading advisor on business strategy. We partner with clients in all sectors and regions to identify their highest-value opportunities, address their most critical challenges, and transform their businesses. Our customized approach combines deep insight into the dynamics of companies and markets with close collaboration at all levels of the client organization. This ensures that our clients achieve sustainable competitive advantage, build more capable organizations, and secure lasting results. Founded in 1963, BCG is a private company with 66 offices in 38 countries. For more information, please visit www.bcg.com.

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