• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, August 3, 2015

The CMO Club, founded in 2013 and comprised of 700 member chief marketing officers, has launched what it's calling a vendor rating program which will rank and categorize agencies, media-buying firms and other advertising service firms into 18 categories.

CMO Club Founder Peter Krainik says the service is simply an organized version of the conversations that already occur between CMOs when they mix and mingle with each other at industry events. The rating service, which has been collecting input since early 2013, will be available to CMO Club members but will not be made public. 

In collecting data for the rating service, CMOs are asked to answer 15 questions consisting of drop downs and open ended questions.

Of the service, Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi CEO Jack Klues said: "A confidential sharing of experiences within this group seems no different than that provided by Glass Door, which allows employees a place to anonymously share their experiences with current past employers. I welcome constructive, credible criticism. Rants and complaints without context or substantiation help no one."