In my absence, I’ve asked a couple of our global advisory board members to share some of their thinking with you. I’m sure that after 10 years of hearing me drone on about things, a break in the monotony will be a welcome change!

You will also be hearing from the CMO Council team a lot over the next month. We have a lineup of terrific research, papers and events happening, so let me give you some advance notice on what we have coming up:

• The Customer Experience Summit: We’ve yet again partnered with SAP on an elite gathering in conjunction with the technology powerhouse event, SAPPHIRE NOW, being held May 16–18 in Orlando, Florida. This year, we are thrilled to announce we are bringing on another partner, Selling Power, to bring sales executives into the customer experience dialogue. The event will be a day and a half of knowledge exchange and customer experience master classes featuring brand and sales leaders from organizations like Avis, Maui Jim, Facebook, Uber, Alibaba, WeChat and more. This is an invitation-only event with very limited seating. If you are interested in learning more, you can find out more at https://cmocouncil.org/authority-leadership/events/2121.

• Customer experience research: Part of the Customer Experience Summit will include the release of some research that we have just kicked off, assessing the dynamic, alignment and readiness of marketing and sales organizations to deliver on the promise of a data-driven, real-time, contextual customer experience. We are getting down to the nitty gritty on this one, asking both sales and marketing leaders if they even have the same definition of customer experience! As with all of our research, we need your help to get the mindset of marketers accurately benchmarked. If you have 10 minutes to spare, please click here to take our survey.

• Who wants dinner? Chances are, in the next few months, we will be inviting you to attend a CMO Council dinner dialogue. If you’d like to see which cities we are going to be visiting during the next quarter, visit https://cmocouncil.org/authority-leadership/events/calendar.

I know over these next months, I’ll be leaving you in terrific hands. I’ll be back in several weeks with baby pictures of the newest CMO Council member.

Until then!

Liz

• Marketing