Entertainment marketing strategist Lee Hunt and business development expert Lori Pate have joined forces to officially launch global online portal CMOmarketplace.

Optimized for use from any computer, tablet or mobile device, CMOmarketplace uses advanced search capabilities that allow marketing executives at “client” companies (media companies, entertainment and corporate brands) to compare and contrast creative projects from dozens of vetted agencies. They can also browse agency showrooms, save work in “favorites” folders to share with others and follow agencies for updates on new work. Buyers can both see agencies’ public work online as well as direct message them via the portal to request further work samples.

Conceptualized by Hunt and Pate even before the pandemic brought in-person meetings to a halt, CMOmarketplace draws on both Hunt and Pate’s respective expertise in entertainment marketing while incorporating the feedback they gleaned from numerous clients and agencies during a listening tour late last year.

“When you have an explosion of entertainment platforms, less time to market them and more and more creative agencies competing for that work, it can be overwhelming,” Hunt said in a statement. “This listening tour gave us the opportunity to build in shortcuts for buyers that both flatten the world and reduce the friction of connecting with creative agencies.”

Since debuting in a soft launch over the summer, more than 100 media companies have registered for the portal, which features the work of 22 talented creative agencies of varying sizes and specialties, from branding, spots and experiential to digital, social, print and more.

“It’s been a long time in coming – a terrific resource for buyers and sellers of creative marketing. As the media world gets more complicated, finding the right creative partner just got a little easier,” said John Miller, chair, NBCUniversal Marketing Council, also in a statement.

“I think CMOmarketplace is a really useful tool for my teams. Often, it’s hard to remember a new agency’s name, find their website and, once there, know what I’m looking at. This way, everything’s in one place and searchable,” said Robert Gottlieb, EVP Marketing at Fox Sports Media Group.

“We’re really hoping to change people’s habits during this odd time, to get them used to this efficient, new marketing tool in the same way Zoom has become useful. When we conceptualized CMOmarketplace a year ago, of course we didn’t anticipate the pandemic,” said Pate, who has been focused on enlisting top agency talent to the portal.

“Connecting buyers and sellers via an online marketplace was something we felt was already needed. The current COVID working model merely amplifies the need to connect more efficiently, with new practices we should carry into the future.”

While anyone can register and access CMOmarketplace for free, creative agencies – once vetted by Pate and Hunt – will need to subscribe to feature their work using one of three fee-based subscription tiers that offer a range of exposure and analytics benefits, including personalized data and trends. At the Platinum subscription level, Hunt also offers traffic analysis.

Tags: cmomarketplace lee hunt lori pate


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