CMO COUNCIL™ PROGRAMS

The exit poll surveyed retail shoppers exiting BestBuy, CompUSA and Circuit City stores during Dads and Grads season in 2005. Shoppers were asked about the products they purchased, how their purchase was influenced by various information sources, how much time they spent researching their purchase on the Web, and whether or not their purchase decision was changed after they entered the store.

The results were presented in a comprehensive report that generated articles by media outlets such as CNET News, The Wall Street Journal Radio Network, MediaPost and Internet Retailer. Download report

GROW WHO YOU KNOW
Marketing executives are increasingly challenged to improve their return on customer relationships. Investments are growing in events, membership associations; user and developer groups and relationship-mining sales applications, even as confusion grows about how social networking and relationship intelligence can improve ROI.

Building on the insights and interests generated from the "Staging and Gauging" research initiative, the CMO Council launched the "Grow Who You Know" program to explore how marketers can harness the power of relationships and relationship networks to gain valuable market access, insight and influence. more »
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MARKET VIGILANCE, PRODUCT DILIGENCE
Competitive global forces and factors are pressuring technology companies to constantly monitor, calibrate and adjust product development, build and delivery in the face of continuous and often unpredictable demand and supply chain dynamics. Adaptive pricing, agile response to competitive moves, effective stewardship of individual products, as well as astute management of product portfolios have become essential business performance indicators.

Gaining greater visibility into the variables that impact product pricing, availability, profitability, and time-to-market has become a strategic imperative for product marketing and management executives. How well companies plan, predict, project, track, and react on a product level can greatly impact business performance outcomes. Access to reliable, real-time data on product inventories, market pressures, sales pipelines, business forecasts and actual results can optimize decision making on how to best allocate spend and resources on a marketing level.

To what degree are product marketers equipped to make intelligent, informed and insightful decisions that drive top-line and bottom line performance, as well as maximize product value and longevity? How effective are their intelligence systems, forecasting capabilities and pricing strategies? Do they have a comprehensive product lifecycle approach and global view of both supply and demand chains?

These and other issues have been explored in an intellectual capital initiative under the auspices of the Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum and the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council. Underwritten by Vistaar, a pioneer of next-generation product planning and pricing solutions, "Market Vigilance, Product Diligence" brings together global brand leaders for qualitative dialogs and quantitative assessments of effectiveness. The program delivered valuable views and perspectives, as well as detailed best practice methodologies for optimizing product marketing performance.
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TARGETING WITH TEXTING
According to professionals across a wide range of industries, text messaging has blossomed into a critical mechanism for enterprises and organizations as a means of instant, effective and affordable messaging alerts. To explore this subject in greater detail, Clickatell and the CMO Council launched a thought leadership initiative, Targeting with Texting: The Value of Just-in-Time Mobile Messaging, to bring greater clarity to the drivers, issues and opportunities with text messaging in the organization.

Sponsored by Clickatell, the premier global mobile message carrier, and conducted by the CMO Council and FAME, the study examine how mobile messaging services are being embraced to drive new targeted alert initiatives. Download report

CRUNCH TIME GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS AUDIT
Do U.S. companies risk falling behind global forces that are reshaping the competitive landscape in technology and telecommunications? Crunch Time: The Global Competitiveness Audit, an Intelligent Market Engagement™ program, comprehensively explored increased global competition and its effect on North American firms.

The study, conducted by the CMO Council and the Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum in cooperation with global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney, showed that U.S. companies are not keeping pace; in fact, two-thirds of the more than 300 executives surveyed said they had not instituted formal practices for tracking and analyzing their competition.

The study underscored the dramatic realignment of global competition, including the rapid rise of China and India as important new centers of competition. In fact, U.S. executives point to China as a source of competition over the next two years nearly as often as they do other U.S. companies.

North American companies are increasingly turning to offshore operations and outsourcing as a means of coping with overseas competition, the study found. While respondents cited the cost of skilled labor as the most important factor driving offshoring decisions, it’s not the only one. Access to local markets, innovation capacity and speed, and access to intellectual capital also were identified as important drivers.

Conducted in late 2004 and early 2005, Crunch Time serves as a benchmark for the ever-increasing challenges of global competition. Download report

SYNDICATE TO EDUCATE™
CMO Council Study to Assess How Buyer Perceptions, Preferences and Actions are Influenced by the Consumption of Syndicated Vendor Content Online. Quarterly Document Download Analytics™ (DDA) were supplied by KnowledgeStorm.

To what degree is this free downloadable content influencing and shaping buyer opinions and behavior? How is it being used to screen and qualify potential suppliers, contractors and vendors? How much reliance and trust is now placed on vendor-syndicated content and to what degree is it viewed as objective and credible? Which are the most popular channels for sourcing decision-support content and how frequently do users visit these destinations? What topics, content areas and formats are most valuable and enlightening? Which online channels have the most download activity and why? Which type and level of decision makers are downloading content and in what business sizes, industry sectors and geographic regions is this taking place?

These and other questions were answered in the CMO Council’s ongoing Syndicate to Educate™ authority leadership marketing program. Drawing on KnowledgeStorm’s real-time analytics relating to vendor-syndicated content, the CMO Council provided quarterly reports on content syndication and consumption patterns and trends as possible indicators of category, vendor and geographic business performance. KnowledgeStorm draws its analytics from a content delivery network of more than 150 online media channels, and 2.0 million monthly visitors. more »

RENOVATE TO INNOVATE™
The priorities and ground rules have changed for global marketing leaders. CEOs and boards are demanding greater accountability, performance analytics and tangible evidence of business value. This requires CMOs to develop a performance-driven, outcome-centered business mindset in their organizations, in addition to new disciplines, best practices and technology-enabled processes. Highly measurable digital channels for accessing and engaging the market are proliferating, requiring different skills, resources and technical acumen. Marketers have a need to be fully aligned with strategic and financial goals, as well as deeply immersed in the culture and brand persona of the organization. Marketing can no longer lag other functional areas in embracing automation, process innovation and real-time decision support systems. Nor can companies rely on traditional agency models, procurement techniques and outsourced services. Departments need consolidation and renovation, staff needs reskilling and replacing, and organizational structures require significant realignment and refocusing. Critical customer, transactional and competitive information has to be sourced and leveraged to better allocate and optimize spend. Methods for addressing the challenges, requirements and approaches for increasing yield, output and operational effectiveness need to be identified. To explore these new requirements, the CMO Council along with underwriter MarketBridge, undertook a comprehensive study entitled RENOVATE TO INNOVATE: Building Performance-Driven Marketing Organizations. more »

STAGING & GAUGING
When it comes to event programs, chief marketing executives seem to be of two minds. On the one hand, they say events are a vital part of overall marketing plans, but on the other, there’s a big question mark when it comes to using them as a strategic marketing vehicle. Those are just some of the details from a study fielded by the CMO Council and the Computer Event Marketing Association (CEMA). Entitled “Staging & Gauging: Do Events Pay Off?” the study examined the role, value and effectiveness of event marketing from both the CMO and event manager points of view.

The survey confirmed that events are high up on marketers’ lists: Despite a drop-off in events after the tragedy of 9/11 and the subsequent slowdown, event marketing has rebounded significantly. However, less than half of the CMOs polled said they are “very committed” to centrally managing and using events as a strategic marketing vehicle. Even more telling, only 33 percent of event managers feel their CMOs are “very committed” to events. Asked how integrated their events are with other marketing functions, just 36 percent of CMOs claim they are “tightly integrated.”

Staging & Gauging consisted of a quantitative survey of nearly 450 top marketers and event managers. An informative Webinar, featuring event marketing experts from companies such as BearingPoint, Cognos, Symantec and Xerox, attracted close to 400 registrants. Download report

DIGITAL DIRECTIONS
How are digital technologies impacting promotional marketing activities? Are marketers taking full advantage of wireless networks, digital devices and the Internet to reach customers? Digital Directions: How Technology is Touching & Transforming Promotions, an Intelligent Market Engagement™ program fielded in partnership with the Promotion Marketing Association (PMA), set out to answer those questions and more.

Surveying nearly 300 top marketing top marketers from a variety of industries, the study found that while the majority of marketers believed that technology has positively impacted and influenced the promotions industry, as well as their own processes and campaigns, a working knowledge of digital marketing was sorely lacking. This knowledge gap and a lack of dedicated resources are causing missed opportunities, both in improving business processes and in reach new customers via campaigns.

The program resulted in a comprehensive final report, with findings that garnered media attention in a wide variety of business and marketing publications. As digital technologies continue to permeate the landscape, Digital Directions serves as a blueprint for future research into technology’s impact on marketing. Download report

MESSAGE MAPS & GAPS (MMG)
A world-class CMO Advisory Committee of 20 CMO's studied the impact of marketing messaging on sales effectiveness.  The goal of the MMG program was to define and establish best practices for creating, delivering and managing 'sales-ready and customer-relevant' marketing messaging that conforms to the way sales people sell, and reflects the conversations they are having with customers. The ultimate challenge and objective is to create an environment and processes that enable marketing and sales to work together both strategically and tactically to drive more revenue through better focus on the customer.

The CMO Council, which is supported by publications like BusinessWeek, USA TODAY and Crain's BtoB Magazine, teamed with the Customer Messaging Management Forum on this project. We also invited Sales & Marketing Management Magazine to participate as well. The CMM Forum is an industry organization dedicated to improving the impact of marketing support on sales effectiveness and works closely with the AMA. Download report

IMPROVE THE RETURN ON RESOURCE BURN
American business is challenged today to lift its game to new levels of productivity and effectiveness. Improved performance – continuously achieving higher rates of return on investments of capital, time and other measurable corporate assets – must become an obsession for managers seeking to ensure the survival and success of their businesses in an era of intensified global competition, increased customer expectations and uncertain economic growth.

Improve the Return on Resource Burn is a thought leadership initiative that studied business performance in one of the most critical areas of endeavor for the modern commercial enterprise, business demand acquisition. Creating and managing the new business pipeline – the process of generating, capturing, qualifying and converting business opportunities – is essential to the growth and profitability of companies across every industry and geographic market. As this study showed, business demand acquisition is a mission-critical process in which companies invest heavily, but generally are dissatisfied with the results. Put positively, it is a business process ripe for performance improvement. more »
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DIGITAL MARKETING DIALOG
The Digital Marketing Dialog is an Intelligent Market Engagement™ program commissioned by Responsys, Inc., a premier provider of email marketing solutions, and sponsored by the CMO Council, BtoB Magazine and USA TODAY.

The thought leadership initiative delved into questions such as: To what extent are national advertisers using rapidly emerging eMarketing channels to optimize and measure campaign success, access and engage with customer markets, and increase acquisition and retention rates? Are digital channels eclipsing or complementing traditional media? What are the benefits and trade-offs? What are the drivers and motivators? What are the risks and roadblocks? And what are the experiences and results?

These and other topics were explored in this timely assessment of the trend towards more personalized, relevant and continuous market interaction through Internet web sites, e-mail, instant and short messaging services, and online viral communications. The program produced a compelling survey results report, strong media attention, intellectual capital around marketing imperatives, and thought leadership for a highly attended web conference led by top executive marketing leaders from companies such as Blue Cross, Cendant, Salesforce.com, and others. Download report