Special Report - The Truth about
Transcontinental Talent

Initially this report started as an expose about a company that was “scamming” models and actors worldwide. After doing over six months of research and interviews on Trans Con Talent, I have found something much more interesting. It is a commentary about media hysteria and a fear of change by an antiquated industry.

First let me start by saying that I am not, nor have I ever been employed by Trans Continental Talent, or any of its predecessor companies. I have no axe to grind, nor any agenda either way except to report the truth.

First let’s start with the facts:

Transcontinental Talent is a company that posts models, actors, and now musicians (talent) on their website so they can be seen by agencies, clients, photographers, A & R people, casting directors, and anyone else who might represent or employ or represent them.

Transcontinental charges the talent to post their information online. There is an initial set-up fee which has changed over time, plusthen t they charge $20 per month for the talent to keep their information online. There is no obligation to keep their pictures posted for a certain length of time, so it’s $20 per month as long as the talent wants to keep paying.

There are thousands of companies that do the same thing, but Transcontinental Talent (TC Talent) has become the “eBay” of the industry as the undisputed leader.

Transcontinental started out as a very humble company just a couple of years ago with less fewer than 10 employees. Through aggressive marketing and some strategic mergers they have grown to a company with over 75 65 offices (including over 60 in the United States alone) and a staff of over 5000 worldwide.

For a company that has been around for such a short time their talent has achieved a tremendous good amount of success-remember, they are not a talent or booking agency- they don’t book the people on jobs- they simply serve as a medium where people who want to book talent can find people. Their actors have been in many TV shows and major motion pictures, while their models have appeared in dozens many of national magazines and commercials. They are the official search company for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and 3 of the 4 finalists for the prestigious LA Looks model search were discovered by Transcontinental Talent.

As a business

They also are extremely successful. Entrepreneur Magazine has them listed in the top 100 franchises and top 100 fastest growing companies (under Options Talent, their predecessor which merged to become Trans Continental this past September). Recently a franchise which initially sold for $12,000 fetched over $1,000,000.

Generally a company with so much success has praise heaped upon it, and admittedly Trans Continental Talent receives a lot of favorable press (see the TC Talent website for links to a number of positive articles). But the real story is the fact that there are posting boards full of negative information about the company as well as negative press reports and negative reports with the Better Business Bureau. The real question is why does a company with seemingly so much positive going for it have such negative information? What is TC Talent’s deep dark secret?

I started by looking at each of these points and interviewing executives at Transcontinental to try to find the answer.

Media

I have read and viewed every negative media piece that has been done about TCT Talent and the most amazing thing is that they are all so similar. They all dwell on the same few points:

1. They show interview a few local models that have not gotten work after being
   on the site varying lengths of time
2. They have former scouts and employees who claim that Trans Continental Talent accepts everyone.
3. They show talent agencies (usually local ones in the market where the report is)
   who state that they do not work with Transcontinental and do not view their website.
4. They show that Trans Continental Talent charges an upfront fee while the
   accepted local talent agencies generally do not charge an upfront fee.

On the surface after reading all the accusations it seemed that the media might have a case.

When this information was taken to Transcontinental they easily answered each point. The following were the responses to each “issue”.

They show models that have not gotten work

Transcontinental responded that many of their models might in fact not get work. They showed us their marketing materials that state that models may not get work-it is in writing in the materials everyone is given. Their position is that there are no guarantees in the industry and that some models will be very successful, while others may achieve no success.

They also pointed out that many times the media portrays the fact that some models get work as a testament that no one works, which is false and mis-leading

They have former scouts and employees who claim that Transcontinental accepts everyone.

Transcontinental responded that they do accept anyone. They showed us marketing material that tells customers that they are a posting board that allows people interested in modeling to promote themselves within the industry.

They argued that they are like monster.com, which allows anyone to post a resume and does not discriminate. Imagine if monster.com only accepted resumes from people who’d graduated with a certain grade point average? Instead, monster.com accepts everyone and those doing the hiring can weed out whose resumes they don’t wish to view. Trans Continental has a search engine that allows the agencies to do the same.

They did say that their scouts are instructed to look for people that fit into the industry criteria and that they do inform models of industry standards, but the decision to join or not is left up to the model.

They show agencies who state that they do not work with Transcontinental and do not view their website.

Trans continental Talent responded that they have never claimed that every agency uses their service. The claim they make is over 1000 agencies use their service. They specifically pointed out that many small, local agencies which sell composite cards of photographyor have their own websites where they charge models to post pictures, and these agencies may view them as competition.

They also noted that they have dozens of video testimonials from agents and clients which regularly use the site. So one or two agencies saying they do not use the site proves nothing. They pointed out that if one person says they do not use eBay it does not mean that millions of others do not use eBay.

They show that Transcontinental charges an upfront fee while the accepted agencies generally do not charge an upfront fee.

Trans Con Talent responds vehemently replied that they are not an agency and in fact, there are a number of points in their materials where they mention this fact, both in writing and in their videos. They do not replace agencies; rather they provide a replacement for printers, which create composite cards. In the industry, printing companies are always paid at the time of delivery for printing composites.

When I then asked Trans Continental Talent (TC Talent) why many of the stories about them seem to be negative when they have such simple answers to the misunderstands about their company, they responded with the following explanation:

One must remember that the media and in particular the Consumer Reporters’ jobs are not to help the public. Their job is to sell advertising. The way they sell advertising is to create ratings (people watching your station).

If you asked a reporter the following question;

Would you rather do a very fair and accurate piece that nobody watched or would you rather do a sensationalized piece that drew incredible ratings but may have shown a customer or product in a less than completely fair light?

Most reporters, if they were being truly honest, would answer B and that is as it should be., d Don’t forget, they are in business to get viewership and sell ads NOT TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC.

And let’s face it - modeling sells. They start the shows with cool music and high fashion runways. The catch phrases are always the same … “If someone tells you you’ve got the look, then look out!!”...or something equally catchy. It makes for great entertainment (beats another report about some health violation at a restaurant) and is fun to watch. But that doesn’t mean that the report is fair, balanced or accurate. And why should it be- this is, after all, the entertainment industry.

BBB

Next I asked the company why they had an unsatisfactory report with the Better Business Bureau. The following was how the company responded;

First of all we are very proud of our record with the BBB. We have fewer than 200 complaints nationwide in about three years. We have had over 100,000 customers in that time, so for every 1000 customers 2 have been unsatisfied. That is a 99.8% satisfaction rating.

This does not mean that we don’t feel that we have to continue dealing with legitimate business issues. As a company that grew from less than 10 people to thousands in a short time, we have experienced growing pains and we constantly strive to improve the quality of our service. We are like any other company, and where we have made mistakes or been able to clear up policies for our customers, we always strive to do so.

I the asked why they are given an unsatisfactory record with the BBB

One has to look at how the BBB determines company’s ratings. First of all keep in mind that the BBB is a privately franchised business, so different franchises have different rules. For example a BBB in Miami was recently shut down by the government for fraud. This does not mean that all BBB’s are fraudulent, but it certainly can be said that this particular office had some issues in how it operated.

Also one must consider that the BBB survives solely by selling memberships and receiving donations from businesses. Transcontinental has chosen not to donate to the BBB, choosing to give to charities supporting battered women and other socially important causes, instead. One doesn’t have to do a lot of “investigating” to find that the BBB rarely criticizes the companies that donate to it.

That said, the BBB generally rates a company by comparing the number of complaints they get to the number of complaints other companies in the same industry receive. For example, even though Dell Computers receives about 1800 complaints per year, they are still considered a company with an incredible customer service record simply because other computer companies, according to the BBB, get far more complaints..

The flaw as it relates to TCT is that the BBB makes no allowance for the number of customers a company has. TCT, by being larger than any other scouting company, or for that matter any other modeling company, actually hurts itself because of its size. A modeling company with 200 customers that gets 50 complaints would receive a better rating than TCT with 200 complaints. Even though the 200 complaints represent less than 1/5 of 1% at TCT but those same 50 complaints represent 25% of their smaller company’s total customers.

This flaw is what causes the BBB to rate TCT in a negative light. In addition, with TCT’s propensity to attract media, the BBB is given the opportunity to appear on television reports which increases visibility and increases its attempts to get donations from local businesses.

For this reason the BBB will not even engage in a meaningful dialogue with TCT. They are more interested in chasing the media attention they get, than in really helping consumers.

Internet Postings

Finally, a simple Internet search shows several negative postings on bulletin boards and even some sites exclusively targeted at criticizing TCT. The company responded to those in the following manner:

First of all, there are websites trashing almost every major company in existence. There are websites trasching the BBB (Badbusinessbureau.com), Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, Walmart etc. The interenet has become the world’s biggest graffitee wall. Anyone can post anything and they may have ulterior motives.

For example, several web builders have been former employees that were fired or hired by competitors. TC Talent has made a big splash in the industry and many people that can’t compete in the market would rather take their frustrations out by posting something online.

Even current employees have had fun with posting boards. There was a contest going on to see who could post the most outrageous posting about the company. The winner was that all the owners at Trans Con Talent were aliens from outer space. This posting actually remained on a so-called ‘legitimate’ consumer web board for days, which clearly shows how easy it is to post anything about a company on the web, truthful or not.

All that said, we still view the posting boards to find potential flaws in our service. We have created an online help system that is almost real time so if our customers have real issues they can get them resolved by contacting us directly.

One thing you will notice is that the vast majority of posters are not our customers. They are either former employees or people that assumed that just because we charge for our service there must be something wrong. Once people understand what we do, that we are a scouting and posting service for models, actors and musicians, and that yes, we do charge a fee and we will post anyone’s picture as long as they understand what areas of the industry we think they have the most potential in, a lot of misconceptions could be cleared up. Unfortunately, too many people get caught up in the media hype and frenzy of internet postings, some of which are so ridiculous they are clearly made up, that they don’t want to think logically. We have tens of thousands of satisfied customers- men and women and children whose first taste of the industry came through us, and who are now in music videos, commercials, magazine layouts, major motion pictures