Cyber City Teleservices has come a long way since since 2000, when it had eight call center operators and three customers. Today, the company has 3,000 operators and more than 70 customers at its two locations in the Philippines – one at Clark Air Base near Manila and the other at Davao, about 600 miles away. The company is also looking at locations in Vietnam, Thailand and China, where management believes that the model used in the Philippines can be successfully replicated.

I learned these facts and more about CCT and the offshore call center business courtesy of Erv Magram, managing director of the company’s catalog division, who invited me to CCT’s First Annual Customer Forum and User’s Conference. The event started on Monday night with a networking dinner at Ben Benson’s Steak House in New York and continued Tuesday with a program of presentations by company executives and other experts in teleservices.

One of the reasons the company is keen on “expanding its footprint” in other countries is that HSBC Private Equity (Asia) Ltd bought a major share in CCT about a month ago. Paul Kang, director of the HSBC fund, praised CCT’s management, its customer relationships and its technologies and employee training practices. He said he fully expected the company to double or triple its sales and profits in the next 3-4 years.

Mark Watson, CCT’s chief technology officer, listed the tools the company has created in-house, from being able to activate 800 numbers in 24 hours rather than the customary 30-40 days, to establishing routing and redundancy solutions between and among Clark, Davao and the company’s affiliate in Colombia, South America.

Linda Chando, the Call Center Services VP, said the company had built a training school on the Clark Air Base compound to explain what American customs, and customers, were all about. She pointed out that agents received between two and fourteen weeks’ training after being accepted by CCT, with additional training in all vertical markets covered by the company. She said the average agent’s performance score is 87% and the attrition rate is between 2%-3%, far below that of domestic call centers.

There were many other interesting presentations by experts in the teleservices field, including Liz Kislik of Liz Kislik and Associates; Tim Searcy, CEO of the American Teleservices Association; Jay Baney, president of Haband; Curt Barry of F. Curtis Barry & Associates; and Angela Donaghy, CCT’s corporate counsel.

But one of my favorite discussions was with Erv Magram, former owner of the Lew Magram Catalog, who described how the business was started by his father and later operated by Erv and his sister until they sold it in 1997. It seems that Lew Magram started by selling socks and ties in the Dawn Patrol Barber Shop on 53rd St. and Seventh Avenue in New York in the 1940s. When a retail store next to a barbershop became available, he signed a lease and started selling dress shirts.

The big break came when Jack Haley (the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz) bought a custom-made dress shirt and told his friends all about the store. Within a short amount of time, every Broadway actor was patronizing the store, and Lew Magram took on the moniker “Shirtmaker to the Stars.”

I can remember the ads back in the 1950s in The New York Times and various men’s magazines carrying ads from “Lew Magram, Shirtmaker to the Stars.” Eventually a successful catalog of menswear was created. But then, while Erv and his sister were running the business, another problem arose in the late 1970s. Custom-made dress shirts and other high fashion men’s wear lost their popularity. Erv recalls it was list expert Don Mokrynski who advised him one day to start offering womenswear in the Lew Magram Catalog – and this brought on another 20 years of success.

It’s a great story. But the Cyber City story is not too shabby either. Founder and chairman Jonathan Rosenberg informed me that it was like a family when they started and it’s still like a big family, even though they have over 3,000 employees. He added that the top management all live in modest houses in a compound on the Clark Air Base.

In response to a question about what happens to the Philippines business when the company enters Vietnam, Thailand and China, vice chairman Warren Golden (a former executive at the Lew Magram Catalog) assured me that the company is in the Philippines for the long haul.

-Posted by Adrian Courtenay

Sunday October 14: Day one at the DMNews booth at DMA07.

Our conversations are being accompanied by the strains of the bagpipe music coming from the entrance to the exhibit hall. The mood is definitely reminiscent of a high school reunion, if your high school reunion hosted a few dozen blue-shirted handymen wheeling around carts of technical equipment, cleaning supplies, and duct tape.
There were, of course, plenty of opportunities for people to catch up with one another last night, with the assorted parties that were peppered around Chicago. I was at the DMEF dinner, sitting with the recipient of the corporate leadership award, Draftfcb. Howard Draft accepted the award on behalf of his agency, and spoke compellingly about the responsibility that he and his peers had to support educational initiatives and ensure that the talent pipeline that was flowing into the industry was not going to dry up.
While that was a worthy part of the evening, and the steak was delicious, the best part of the event was when Jon Roska of Roska Direct, kicked off the auction. As Matt Besler from Experian just now pointed out to me, it’s not that often that you’re sitting at an industry dinner and some guy gets onto the mic and starts hitting the attendees up for money. But with fantastic humor and energy, Roska gleefully shamed everyone into raising $500,000.
Of course, the competition was amusing, and while I won’t name names, I did hear a few instances of, “OK, they just pledged $5,000, so we’d better pledge $10,000.”
Just when the action was beginning to dry Knowledgebase Marketing ponied up $20,000, if the room could match it. Roska did so admirably.
There were some touching memorials made too, as well as enough pledges made in the name of Tim Litle’s wife (Litle received the Edward N. Mayer Educational Leadership Award) to make him feel like something of a second fiddle on his own special night. The video celebrating his work redressed that balance, and I think everyone attending felt that they were a little bit blessed to be in his presence. My colleague Chantal wrote more about this, also on our blog.
Foundation president Terri Bartlett rightly earned accolades for the evening, and while I failed quite spectacularly to locate any of the other parties happening afterwards, I turned in feeling like I’d already had as much fun as a person needed for one night.

- Posted by Elly Trickett

Chicago — Tim Litle, chairman and founder of Litle & Co. may have been the man of the evening at the Direct Marketing Education Foundation’s annual awards dinner and auction, held here Saturday, but his wife Joan got her fair share of attention, too.
During the program and scholarship auction, several people pledged donations in the names of their spouses. After one attendee made his donation in the name of Joan Litle, several others followed suit. Not to be outdone, during his acceptance speech for the 2007 DMEF Edward N. Mayer Jr. Award for Educational Leadership, Litle pledged $100,000 to the DMEF’s Litle Fund for a new pilot program and in the name of his wife.
The new program is intended to create a way for the DMEF to tap into donations made by college alumni to their alma maters and influence the direct marketing curriculum offered by schools.
Pledges for the program and scholarship auction exceeded the evening’s goal of $150,000 for a total of $163,000, not counting Litle’s donation.
During the live auction, the bidding was lively as representatives from many leading direct marketing firms competed for a trip to Machu Picchu and a day as a fighter pilot, among other prizes.
Also being honored Saturday night was Draftfcb, which received the 2007 DMEF Corporate Leadership Award.

–Posted by Chantal Todé

The Electronic Retailing Association’s 17th Annual Conference, which took place in Las Vegas this week, was an impressive affair in many ways. With 3000 attendees and 118 exhibitors, the event surpassed previous headcounts among its traditional constituency of DRTV marketers while attracting a growing number of major retailers as well.

The ERA has always had a flair for show business, and this year was no exception. The conference took place at the gargantuan Venetian hotel, where gondoliers plying their way through the man-made canal in front of the hotel serenade their clients with arias from Puccini, and the gilded meeting rooms have names like Galileo, Marco Polo, Titian and Bellini.

In keeping with this show business orientation, the Opening General Session featured advertising maven Donny Deutsch, who interviewed a panel of divas including Cindy Crawford, who talked about the origins of her unique line of beauty products called “Meaningful Beauty;” Leesa Gibbons, who talked about the origins of her unique line of beauty products called “Sheer Cover Story;” and Susan Lucci, who talked about the origins of her unique line of beauty products called “Youthful Essence.” (It’s all about empowerment and bringing out one’s inner beauty.)

But even more impressive to me than the growing attendance and the show business flair was the fact that the ERA and its members have recognized the impact of the Internet and the multichannel nature of marketing. And as a result, they are seeking and finding new ways to reconfigure their DRTV campaigns with Social Networking, search and email marketing and other Internet-based opportunities. The focus was strikingly evident both in the conference programming and the services being offered by the exhibitors and sponsors at the show.

One highly informative session was called “Increase your ROI with new technologies.” Moderated by Brett Goffin, Vertical Manager of Retail at Google, the session pointed out that the DRTV field is different from pureplay Internet, because two-thirds of search activity for DRTV products are driven by offline media – providing a competitive advantage for DRTV marketers. Another tip was that the marketer’s Web site is not just an order taking vehicle. In fact, it’s just as important as DRTV for getting leads and cross-selling.

This session also focused heavily on Social Networking as a marketing tool, pointing out that MySpace has posted 72% year over year growth, while FaceBook has posted a 270% increase and 14 million professionals have joined LinkedIn. The next wave of growth at MySpace, by the way, is expected to be among adults, not kids. Web analytics have further revealed that a number of major retailers are crediting MySpace as their number two source of referrals.

Another technique recommended in the session was the use of blogs by retailers. According to panelist Angus Glover Wilson of Digital Commerce Agency, the public is seeking authentic engagement with marketers, and blogs provide a way for marketers to have a dialogue with their customers and find out what they want. Responding to a question from the audience, Wilson indicated that his biggest surprise in the last year was how fast online video has become ubiquitous.

A second worthwhile session, moderated by Johnny Mathis, CEO of Livemercial, provided additional insights on the topic of Social Networks. A few nuggets from this session:

Marketers have to get beyond the old paradigm of advertising on videos. The Online Publishers Association recently studied the effectiveness of video ads and found that 50% of people who saw video ads took some action. A whole new phenomenon in shopping is pre-shopping – either offline or online. But all of this is not about marketing spin. “You have to prepare for honesty, because people are going to be honest with you.” If you’re trying to control things, you’re fighting with the way the Internet works. Advertisers are finding that 5-7 second videos are getting a lot of attention, rather than the old 30-60 second ads. Educate your customers by chopping up ads into little pieces, as Burma Shave used to do with its highway signs sixty years ago.

Terrific stuff. But what about the tools being offered to electronic retailers (and other direct marketers) by their suppliers who were exhibiting at the conference? I’ve selected two whom I considered to be emblematic of the way that electronic retailers have embraced the new world of marketing.

“If you build a neat, single offer Web site for each and every advertiser, you will get better results.” That’s the firm opinion of Ken Osborn. And that’s the basis of his full service ecommerce and interactive marketing agency, Liquid Focus. Osborn doesn’t believe in shopping carts, because “99% of shoppers abandon their carts without ordering,” and “the sites give too much information and too many choices.” So Liquid Focus offers turnkey Web sites featuring flash as the streaming video platform. This works both for high-speed and dial-up. Osborn indicates he is so certain of the design, software and order entry features of his microsites that he prices his services on a strictly performance basis.

“Bottom line,” he says, “the model works.”

Another noteworthy exhibitor is the aforementioned Livemercial, which I wrote about two years ago in connection with its ability to use Flash-based video to stream online video, television spots or testimonials within a brand-focused email creative. Today the company also provides its 80-plus clients with a lead generation platform, back-end research surveys, natural search optimization, paid search, contextual targeted media, Omniture Site Catalyst reporting and a seminar portal that generates millions of dollars per month for seminar marketers.

The company is also one of only a few U.S. agencies currently allowed to utilize Doubleclick’s Advertising Exchange, and is a Google Certified agency, utilizing Google’s programs to bid on banners and text link inventory on a CPM and CPC basis. According to the company’s brochure, “There is simply no larger contextual advertising network in the world,” and Livemercial has a six-day-a-week staff of industry veterans managing campaigns on such sites as the New York Times, Food Network, About.com and Lycos.

According to CEO Johnny Mathis, the company’s clients include Guthy-Renker, Sony, Bath and Body Works, Murad, Body by Jake, Rug Doctor, SAS Group and many others. He adds that Livemercial has maintained a 90% renewal rate with its clients.

Great information, great show. One veteran exhibitor recalled that there were only 75 attendees at the first show. The ERA has come a long way since then.

–Posted by Adrian Courtenay

British indie prog band Radiohead is giving a little back to their fans by letting them choose the price they’d like to pay to download their new album “In Rainbows.” The band finished their contract with record label EMI with their last album “Hail to the Thief,” and are releasing the new album themselves through their Web site www.radiohead.com.

While Radiohead may be giving up profits from online sales, with this donation process (seemingly fans would choose to download the album for free), the band is selling a discbox, which contains a CD, two vinyl records, digital music files, album art and lyrics booklets for 40 pounds, which will appeal to the avid fan and collector.

This is a very smart way for the band to market themselves direct to the consumer through their Web site and existing reputation, despite not being available in record stores or on iTunes. In addition, as the band will be profiting directly from all sales, they stand to earn more than they have in the past, as major labels and retailers tend to make most of the profits from music sales (according to a Brian Eno book in the 90s, bands make less than 10 percent of sales). The fans will feel closer to the band and the band will be able to harness this relationship with direct sales.

-Dianna Dilworth