SAN JOSE, Calif. (July 13, 2017)—Go-to-market is a business-critical, highly complex and carefully sequenced process for global brands today. With companies spending some $1.5 trillion annually to promote their products, effectively managing the marketing supply chain ecosystem has become essential to brand performance and market success. 

As a result, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council has launched a new online Brand Inspiration Center and strategic interest group in partnership with NPES—the Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies. The thought leadership initiative, dubbed “Brand Innovation from Value Chain Inspiration,” is designed to identify areas for continuous improvement, showcase and share new ideas/technologies that invigorate brand communication, and underscore ways to streamline supply chain processes and efficiencies.

According to the CMO Council, effective orchestration of product launches and marketing campaigns across the entire sales, distribution, merchandising and customer support repertoire requires significant logistical, technological and operational expertise. This involves new skills, insights, resources, warehousing footprints and analytics to optimize demand-side planning, procurement, production, storage and just-in-time provisioning of critical marketing support, product packaging, merchandising and order fulfillment requirements.  

Research from the CMO Council reveals 94 percent of marketers believe that delivering an omnichannel experience is critical to achieving their business goals. However, only 6 percent are able to deliver relevant, personalized and engaging experiences consistently and at scale across both physical and digital channels, largely due to supply chain deficiencies.

In addition, brand inspiration is largely languishing, especially across physical touchpoints like print, as marketers struggle to drive timely adaptation across brand materials. According to recent CMO Council research, only 20 percent of marketers are satisfied with their creative delivery process and marketing supply chain effectiveness, and less than one-third (32 percent) believe their companies are advanced or doing well when it comes to adapting brand content to different markets.

The Brand Inspiration Center was launched in response to the research findings, which reveal a need for greater collaboration across the marketing supply chain to improve go-to-market efficiency. Featuring insights from brand marketers as well as experts in creative printing, publishing and packaging, the Brand Inspiration Center (www.brandinspiration.org) is an online destination for marketers to gain insights and ideas from an extended ecosystem of 13,000 suppliers who are contributing to greater value, performance and effectiveness in the marketing demand chain.

The website also provides a knowledge-exchange opportunity by inviting people across the supply chain to submit case studies around their own successes and improvements. By sharing experiences and providing a way to learn from one another, the Brand Inspiration Center hopes to foster peer-to-peer thought leadership.

“As brands look to optimize their go-to-market strategies, new thinking will be needed in order to identify ways capitalize on new trends and technologies to further enhance customer engagement and business success through the power of data, print and packaging,” said Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council. “The Brand Inspiration Center will focus on the need for transformation and new skills, insights, resources and analytics to optimize supply chain performance.”

Neale-May notes that there is a critical need for a tighter linkage and closer collaboration between marketing production and creative supply chain partners to better utilize digital assets, optimize marketing execution and ensure brand compliance. CMOs need inspiration and guidance from these resources to understand and leverage:

• New data-driven approaches to mass personalization of content and communication


• Adept use of on-demand digital print and imaging systems that improve quality and sustainability


• Creative versioning of content at scale to deliver production-ready digital files across borders


• Innovations in dimensional marketing, smart merchandising and multi-channel engagement


• Packaging advances that differentiate brands, increase product consumption and make it easier to handle, recycle or re-use containers


• Breakthroughs in material science and multi-service reproduction for more arresting signage and branding


• Brand logistics management to improve demand chain provisioning, reduce transportation and storage costs, and minimize obsolescence

“We are extremely pleased to partner with the CMO Council on this new online resource, which connects brand marketers with experts throughout the creative and production processes, from design to delivery,” stated NPES President Thayer Long. “Here, marketers can learn from technology innovators a myriad of new ways to streamline production processes, maximize effectiveness, discover new and emerging trends, and ultimately achieve the greatest ROI.”

The Brand Inspiration Center features a number of resources, including research programs, white papers, perspectives from industry experts, upcoming events and much more. Learn more at www.brandinspiration.org.

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 corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide range of global industries. The CMO Council's 12,500-plus members control more than $500 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 30,000 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, LoyaltyLeaders.org, CMOCIOAlign.org, Marketing Supply Chain Institute, Customer Experience Board, Digital Marketing Performance Institute, GeoBranding Center, the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME), and the Brand Inspiration Center. For more information, visit www.cmocouncil.org.

About NPES

NPES is a U.S. trade association representing more than 650 companies that manufacture and distribute equipment, software and supplies used across the workflow of printing, publishing and converting processes. NPES owns and produces the global PRINT exhibition and GRAPH EXPO—the most comprehensive exhibition in the Americas for the printing and digital imaging industries. For complete information about the association, its programs and its member companies, visit www.npes.org or call (703) 264-7200.