Inside the CIA

Cable World,  April 4, 2005  

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Learn how to fight competition with cable's best: the top secret, DBS- deflating, telco-defying internal covert ops team known as the Cox Intelligence Agents.

By Shirley Brady

If EchoStar had launched its "Stop Feeding the Cable Pig" campaign in 2002, there would have been little that Cox's cable systems could have done-- short of using a needle--to deflate the satellite TV provider's nasty attacks that featured 22-foot-long, 16-foot-tall inflatable pigs bearing anti-cable slogans.

Luckily for Cox, EchoStar started its mudslinging smear tactics in December 2003. That was three years after the Atlanta-based cable operator had tapped quiet, unassuming Warren Jones to establish an internal corps dubbed the CIA, otherwise known as Cox Intelligence Agents.

This group was set up to merge Cox's competitive strategy with customer retention. In other words, it was created to take on--and beat--Cox's competitors.

So when EchoStar CEO Charlie Ergen dispatched six balloon porkers--with swarms of paid protesters brandishing ham sandwiches, Dish Network T-shirts and signs declaring "Cable rates are piggish"--to cable systems across the country, Cox was ready. It had tactics in place designed to knock the wind out of any enemy, including on-the-ground preparedness and swift outreach to the local press.

"We're definitely not the same company we were back in 2002," says Jones, VP, business operations and residential broadband services for Cox's New Orleans system. "In 2002, I'm pretty confident we would have remained fairly quiet and continued down the path of just talking about what's right about Cox and our products, and really not acknowledging at all a competitor's actions. Now when those types of events happen, we are very active. Not only from a marketing perspective but across the board--from a public affairs perspective, from a legal perspective--we will engage our competitors. And have done so. I know our competitors feel the difference in our culture."

EchoStar got a surprise when its porcine anti-cable campaign rolled into Tulsa, Okla. "We found out about four days before what they were planning to do," Jones says. "We mobilized our Oklahoma team, working with our corporate team, to prepare for that and to have our responses and our main messaging in place."

The Dish Network protest "was a dud," he reports. "There was very little turnout, but we were ready, and I felt very good that--had it materialized into a bigger competitive threat--we were very prepared from the CSRs up to the general manager in Oklahoma."

Step 1: Mission Possible

Jones has helped Cox step up to competitive challenges by promoting teamwork across all product lines. "In 1997, when I joined Cox, we were a one- product, one-market company: cable TV to the residential market," he says. "Today, we sell three products plus enhancements against multiple segments, including commercial. So the business has grown infinitely more complex in the space of only seven years."

Cox began looking into its internal CIA efforts in late 2001 to better succeed in this rapidly changing competitive environment. Pat Esser, EVP and CFO, issued a challenge to what was then known as the company's competitive readiness team--an eight-member group made up of corporate representatives from public affairs, legal, customer care, field service, IT/MIS and marketing. Esser called on the group to turn the company into a smarter, tougher and more proactive competitor.

"The CIA program has helped foster a competitive mind-set among our people in an increasingly dynamic environment," Esser says. "[It] is helping us maintain our position as America's best bundler by providing employees with the information and tools we need to keep our competitors in the rearview mirror."

After six months of research, the CIA program was introduced in May 2002 as an internal brand with a Blues Brothers-like logo. (It's never used in external marketing efforts). The program's mission: to bring a missionary-like zeal to Cox's attempts to understand cable's enemies and predict their next moves.

Cox kicked off its CIA campaign with posters (now collectors' items within the company) featuring president and CEO Jim Robbins in a trench coat and fedora holding a Cox CIA ID card, with the tag lines: "Welcome to CIA Central Command," and "Only you can prevent defections. Join the CIA." A follow-up poster featured a similarly garbed group (Esser plus Cox's three SVP of operations: Claus Kroeger, Jill Campbell and John Dyer) and the words "Only you can protect the front lines of our business." Cox SVP of marketing Joe Rooney adorned another CIA poster.

The acronym stands for more than Cox Intelligence Agents; it's also about being competitive, intelligent and assertive. "We wanted our employees to recognize that it was OK to compete, and it was actually a requirement to compete in the marketplace," Jones says. "We challenged our employees to present the Cox story, whether or not it was part of their day-to-day job. If our employee is in a grocery store checkout line and hears someone behind them talking about one of our competitor's services, they should be empowered and willing to turn around and tell the Cox story."