SAN JOSE, Calif. (October 8, 2015)— The evolution of the chief marketing officer role—from the technology that enables customer experience to the revenue mandates to grow and retain market share—will be the focus of the kickoff keynote at the CMO Council’s 2015 CMO Summit. Being held on December 7–8, 2015, the official CMO Summit (www.cmosummit.org) will gather marketing executives from across North America to delve into the Summit theme: CMO Rising: Reshaping the Role—Exploring the Criticality of Talent, Technology + Transformation.

Kicking off the first day of thought leadership sessions will be “The CMO of 2020: Anticipating the Transformation of the Role,” featuring four widely respected brand marketing executives. The panel will draw perspectives around how CMOs must evolve over the next five years to keep up and succeed in today’s highly fragmented and increasingly complex digital world.

Featured panelists for “The CMO of 2020” will include:

• Christine Heckart, Chief Marketing Officer for Brocade


• John Petralia, Global Head of Marketing for Bloomberg


• Karen Walker, Chief Marketing Officer for Cisco


• Ash El Difrawi, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, Gogo

“The role of today’s true CMO is to serve as the CEO-in-waiting, groomed in all aspects of the business and a true leader of customer experience and value-setter for the organization,” said Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director for the CMO Council. “Yet today’s increasingly complex, distributed and digitally driven marketing ecosystem has put pressure on global CMOs to better integrate and manage data, best-of-breed solutions, creative resources, brand assets and go-to-market functions. This panel of peers showcases what it means for a CMO to rise: to be reshaped and redefined by the business and be ready for how the role will continue to evolve in the future.”

The CMO Council’s CMO Summit is the premier networking and thought leadership event in marketing and the official peer-to-peer networking event for the CMO Council (www.cmocouncil.org), an organization of more than 9,500 global marketers who control nearly $450 billion in combined annual marketing spend. Delegates from across both the B2B and B2C market sectors will be invited to attend this elite retreat to engage with peers and tap into this global network of insight, access and influence.

Attendee registration is now open, and all senior brand marketing executives are encouraged to request an invitation to this exclusive event by visiting https://www.cmosummit.org/request-an-invitation. Individuals who are approved will receive instructions to how to complete their registration and secure their seat at this peer-powered event. Early pricing for registration ($899) ends on November 1, 2015. After that date, the cost to register will increase to $1,299.

This elite retreat is by-invitation-only, and while membership in the CMO Council is not required for attendance, members will have priority handling for all Summit requests. Senior marketers can be nominated for membership. 

For more information about the CMO Council’s CMO Summit, including details on the agenda, venue and the benefits of attending this exclusive event, please visit www.cmosummit.org. To learn more about sponsorship and partnership opportunities, please contact Bryan DeRose (bderose@cmocouncil.org). 

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 9,500 members control more than $450 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 Forum, LoyaltyLeaders.org, CMOCIOAlign.org, Marketing Supply Chain Institute, Customer Experience Board, Digital Marketing Performance Institute, GeoBranding Center and the Brand Inspiration Center. Learn more at www.cmocouncil.org.