Company: News & Announcements 

Avitage Partners with the American Marketing Association
- Industry Thought Leaders Deliver Customer Message Management Series to AMA's 100,000 Members and Subscribers

Wellesley, MA December 16, 2004 -- Avitage, a sales and marketing communication company that impacts Marketing and Sales Effectiveness (MSE), today announced its partnership with the American Marketing Association (AMA) to participate in their CMM (Customer Message Management) Forum. Driven by a consortium of marketing and sales effectiveness industry leaders, the CMM Forum is a series of on and off-line educational events which address "Increasing the Impact of Marketing Support on Sales Effectiveness." The AMA has more than 38,000 members and their MarketingPower newsletter reaches more than 100,000 marketing professionals each week. The AMA Forum, hosted by CMM Marketing Partners, begins in January and will run throughout 2005.

"Several years ago we understood the need to bridge the gap between marketing and sales in order to make marketing organizations more relevant and critical to revenue generation," said Nancy Costopulos, Senior Director, Marketing and Sales, The American Marketing Association. "Through the CMM Forum, we hope to identify and outline marketing's increasing role in growing revenues, as well as highlight some of the best practices for understanding and meeting the needs of the sales force."

The CMM Forum will host a series of programs focused on increasing marketing's role with the delivery of customer messaging that drives sales. The series includes:

• AMA Internet Radio Broadcast - focusing on the strategies and solutions that deliver the right customer message.
• Educational Webcast Series - highlighting industry best practices and solutions for achieving marketing and sales effectiveness
• Editorial Inclusions - advertorials and educational content in Marketing Management Magazine, MarketingPower newsletter and the CMM Monthly newsletter
• Thought Leadership Seminars - an in-person event series for AMA members held in major cities throughout North America

Avitage enables CMM through an approach that combines a methodology for message and content development, with a sales and marketing communication system for deployment and delivery. Together, they form an end-to-end solution for any organization’s message management challenges. The Avitage Marketing and Sales Communication Platform is a hosted web application that provides functionality to both marketing and sales personnel that typically requires multiple systems and vendors: rich media content management, synchronized audio management, self-service telephone narration of PowerPoint slides, instant assembly of PowerPoint shows and audio-graphic programs, integrated web conferencing.

“Improving sales conversations with customers requires more than a few value points on a PowerPoint slide,” said Jim Burns, CEO of Avitage. “It requires messages that are aligned to conversations at each stage of the buying/sales process. It requires dynamic content that supports those conversations. Sales people need help internalizing messages. Messages and content need to be managed for continuous updating based upon feedback from the field. And sales conversations must be delivered using a broad array of media and methods. The CMM forum provides a framework for understanding these challenges, along with ideas and best practices for solving them. We look forward to exchanging our ideas with a great group of people.”

About Avitage
Since 1994 Avitage (pronounced ah-vi-tazh, name derived from the phrase audio-video montage) has helped companies engaged in business-to-business selling communicate more effectively by implementing solutions to conduct personalized electronic communications using media. The hosted sales and marketing communication system redefines the way media is used to communicate by empowering people on the front line of business to produce individualized communications that result in a better way to sell.

About The American Marketing Association
The American Marketing Association is the source that marketers turn to every day, online, in print and in person. AMA members are connected to a network of experienced marketers that's almost 40,000 strong and includes leading marketing professionals and academics from every industry.

The AMA is information, ideas and insight that marketers can use every day, along with the knowledge that helps them grow in their career. Our web site, MarketingPower.com, is the everyday connection to industry updates, news, and articles. We offer highly acclaimed seminars, workshops and Hot Topic events focused on the trends shaping the future. The AMA is also the source for the field's top publications. And AMA local chapters keep members in touch with the best people and the best practices.

For over six decades, the AMA has been the source that marketers turn to first. For more information, please call (800) 262-1150 or visit their website.

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