I’m posting live from the CMO Council Summit in Monterey, CA — it’s a membership-only gathering of approx. 100 CMOs from a range of industries (everything from Ciao Bella gelato to SAP) and the theme of the conference is “Routes to Revenue.” 

As Council Executive Director, Donovan Neale-May, explains, “Given the current economic malaise, this year’s theme is spot on.  Marketing is challenged like never before to retain and grow existing customer relationships…Identifying new revenue opportunities, under-served segments, and adjacent markets will be critical to marketing’s effectiveness in the year ahead.”

I plan to do a more thorough report of the Conference in my next brand as business briefTM (if you’re not on the distribution list, you can sign-up at www.deniseleeyohn.com/newsletter.html ) but here are a few interesting statistics that were bandied around today:

-  123,000 new products were launched in 2007 — of those, only 3,500 generated over $10MM in revenue; only 10 generated over $50MM (source:  not specified) — yikes!

-  in a study of 1,300 products, it was found that an average of 2.5% of the product’s customer base was responsible for 85% of the volume (source:  Catalina Marketing) — certainly makes the case for ensuring you have advanced analytics and customer intimacy so you can retain and grow the most profitable existing customer relationships

-  76% of CMOs say they are not fully realizing the potential of their existing customers (source:  the CMO Council) — a shame, particularly given the prior stat

-  64% of CMOs say they are evaluating all areas to improve marketing performance (source:  the CMO Council) — I’m not sure trying to do everything is the right answer

More conference coverage to come…