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An expanded version of the Q&A with Ken Dice that appears in the print edition.
By Mavis Scanlon
Just shy of his one-year anniversary as EVP, marketing, at Discovery Networks U.S., Ken Dice faces the challenge of maintaining the loyalty of Discovery's longtime viewers while luring a broader audience to the programmer's five well-established analog channels as well as its seven emerging networks, the Discovery.com site and the network group's interactive initiatives.
CW: What best practice have you brought to Discovery from your years as SVP of marketing at Sony?
Ken Dice: Trying to better understand input from the consumer. We have a tendency to jump behind the creative programming idea and run with it. But many times, we don't take a step back to really understand what I like to call the voice of the consumer.
CW: What can cable learn from Sony or McDonald's, an account you worked on while at Leo Burnett Advertising?
Dice: The value of brand and how, if you have a relationship with the consumer based on a key brand proposition or a key personality, that will get you through the strong times as well as through the tough times.
CW: What's the key brand proposition for Discovery?
Dice: That's something we're working on. The company has meant so much over the last 20 years. It's about exploring the world. It's about bringing into perspective things that maybe you never knew before, never understood before, and combining that, not in a new way but in a true storytelling way. Next year is our 20th anniversary, and as we move into our 20th year and beyond, the world has become a far smaller place. People now know the four corners of the world. They are exposed to a lot through technology and through the prolific nature of television--it's harder to truly surprise them. Our success moving forward will be satiating the human need for curiosity. It's just that that curiosity might change a bit. Instead of being about some island in New Guinea that you never heard of, sometimes that curiosity is piqued by talking about a family that makes motorcycles in upstate New York.
Or sometimes that curiosity can be piqued in a more of an interactive and engaging way. A big initiative that we have coming up for '05 is to get viewers to help us figure out who the greatest Americans of all time are. Instead of being the experts and telling people, we are using the great relationship we have with viewers to help us select the greatest Americans. It's moving from a passive way of satisfying people's curiosity to more of an engaging, interactive way of hopefully satisfying people's curiosity.
CW: What kinds of opportunities are there to market Discovery's linear networks in the on-demand world?
Dice: We're learning about on demand every single day through our partners like Comcast and other MSOs. We've got to figure out what our strategies are that help us continue that relationship with consumers in an on -emand world, but also that really helps our traditional business grow.
We want to expose people in an on-demand environment to the kinds of things that are on our networks 24 hours a day. And we can do that by selecting the best programming--it acts like a free sample kit, something that other industries have used for a long time.
The other strategy is more of a vertical strategy. When we have big initiatives on our linear networks, let's make sure we're giving on demand not just to sample the entire offering, but to build on-demand offerings around those bigger ideas. Our January National Body Challenge on Discovery Health is an example. It's our second year, but we made a big change this year--not only will it be a grassroots in-market experience like it was last year, but it will directly translate to online tools and an on-air series that consumers can follow while they are actually doing the body challenge themselves.
CW: Can you leverage the reach of Discovery HD to other Discovery networks?
Dice: We have a little bit of a perfect storm coming together right now in that most TVs being sold these days, at least at the higher end, are HDTV ready, most cable and satellite companies have an HD offering and great programmers like DCI, as well as folks like EPSN, are really up there with day-to-day offerings.
Discovery HD Theater really mirrors the greatest hits from all of our networks. HD has really given us the opportunity to talk about the Discovery family of networks to a different group of people, in a different environment.
CW: What's the best way to bring in new audiences that want to watch American Chopper and Monster Garage on Discovery Channel, while remaining true to those who tune in for science and nature fare?
Dice: That's one of our great balances here--the common thread goes back to curiosity. From a brand perspective, no matter if we're marketing shows that might be considered more of the true DNA of Discovery, those things appeal to people's curiosity. We know who those folks are, and we have a very good relationship with them. But in the last couple of years things like American Chopper, Monster Garage and, what I'm really excited about, MythBusters, are really starting to open up a whole new audience to the same kind of curiosity-quenching programming that Discovery puts out.
Our challenge here is how do we stay true to that inherent sense of exploration in the human spirit but be able to translate it for different folks at different times. What we're trying to do is use our assets in the best way possible. When we have the viewers on our air because they are watching certain programs, we need to make sure we put the right Discovery messages in front of them. Where it gets a little more difficult is how do we reach out to other media opportunities, whether those are traditional, through magazines, radio, newspaper, or even nontraditional through things like the Internet or event marketing, or guerrilla efforts, and really start to introduce Discovery and some of our new shows to people that might not normally be reading the New York Times Op Ed page, or reading the Washington Post.
CW: What Discovery networks are the most challenging to market right now?
Dice: They all have their own challenges. But a short-term challenge is in the world of TLC. TLC has got a wonderful brand. Every time we talk to consumers they love TLC. They love that TLC stands for more than just the old world of The Learning Channel, and really is a new world about personal stories and how you connect with people and create things and change your own life. That's a big opportunity for us. The challenge for us is how do we link that unbelievably strong brand statement to this new group of programming coming out in '05.
We really love What Not to Wear. It hasn't reached the apex that Trading Spaces did. Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but what we're trying to do is see how far we can push it. We had a tremendous marketing effort behind it this summer leading into the fall and what we are seeing now is an uptick in ratings growth. We're excited about the fact that there is a strong show out there that has, just like Trading Spaces did in its first couple of years, a cult following.
We also have some great stuff around the next phase of home improvement. Town Hall, where we're going to take the idea of renovation and blow it up to the power of 10--move from bathrooms and kitchens and bedrooms and go to an entire town.
CW: Speaking of next year, what's in the works with Lance Armstrong?
Dice: We're really excited about the global branding opportunity that the new Discovery Channel new pro cycling team is going to offer us. We're looking at it three ways. One is programming opportunities. [Discovery Networks president] Billy Campbell is excited not only about Lance but cycling and how that might start to drive programming on Discovery, Discovery Health, FitTV, Discovery Science, and how they cover the physics of it, and the Travel Channel because of all the different places they go. The second one is global branding. Discovery is really well known in the U.S., and it has a tremendous reach in 160 countries. We need to make sure that the kind of excitement that consumers have with Discovery here moves to the other parts of the globe as well. We looked at a lot of different opportunities, but cycling really offered us something that not only had a growing U.S. appeal and a huge U.S. star, but an incredibly passionate following in Europe, Asia and Latin America.
The last prong is marketing. How can we use our sponsorship of this team to bring Discovery to life off-air? We think cycling might be an opportunity to use sports and sports marketing to take the brand off of our air and put it in the day-to-day lives of people. That's what we still have to figure out--how do we take it to the streets--how do we give people another way to touch, feel and interact, getting back to that earlier idea of moving from passive to engagement, and interact with the brand in a different way.
CW: Does Discovery want to cover cycling events, in particular, the Tour de France?
Dice: That is not in the works right now. That is not what we're doing. OLN has got the rights to the tour. That is not Discovery's expertise. Our expertise is more around the human side and those curiosity stories that surround cycling and the personalities of it.
CW: What does Discovery mean to cable viewers and operators today?
Dice: I think the brand has evolved, but it hasn't evolved in its core attributes of curiosity and the quest for more information. We have taken it from more of a documentary and educational-only perspective and brought it more to the realm of true entertainment, true curiosity-quenching television, something that when you're done watching it, you feel like you made the right choice.
Getting Personal With Ken Dice
Favorite TV shows: Scrubs, MythBusters, the Food Network's Good Eats, The Apprentice, Arrested Development.
Hobbies: Loving my wife; theater, from Broadway musicals to Shakespeare to experimental; woodworking; and home improvement.
Greatest Accomplishment: Coming to work for Discovery.
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