Chief Marketing Officer mag suspends publication

January 12, 2006.

A Message to Our Readers

As we have chronicled in our print magazine and on our website, one of the CMO’s greatest challenges is balancing a plan for long-term growth with the pressures to produce short-term results. An inability to strike the proper balance is a key contributor to the CMO’s startling 24-month average tenure.

At CMO magazine, we share your struggles – and your short shelf life. Current business realities require us to suspend publication of our 16-month-old magazine as of the January 2006 issue. The extraordinary feedback and support from the CMO community has not been enough to sustain and grow our advertising-supported business in what has become a severely challenged publishing environment.

As a result, we have decided to hit the pause button, take a step back, and consider alternative business plans. It is my sincere hope that we will be able to return with an exciting strategy to invigorate the business and once again begin serving what has quickly become a faithful community of senior marketing executives and other marketing practitioners.

In the meantime, I would like to thank you, our loyal readers, for your patronage, your thoughtful feedback, and your commitment to helping us build this new brand. I would like to thank our advertisers and sponsors for their staunch support. I would like to thank our publisher, Steve Twombly, along with the rest of the sales, marketing, operations and events staff at CXO Media for their tireless efforts in launching CMO in 2004 and driving it forward over the past year and a half.

Most of all, I would like to thank CMO’s talented team of writers, editors and designers for producing a consistently high-quality magazine that surpassed everyone’s expectations. The flame burns brightest, the saying goes, just before it flickers out. CMO has never burned more brightly.

Rob O’Regan, Editor in Chief