Inside the CIA.

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 …