On Thursday, Warner Bros. Discovery announced it was renaming its streaming platform … again. Max will now be known as HBO Max again.
HBO has had the unfortunate luck of being acquired multiple times over the past few years. Time Warner was acquired by AT&T (in a deal that was delayed for over a year) and then sold to Discovery four years later.
When you have so many corporate overlords in a short amount of time, it’s nearly impossible to have any long-term planning.
Will this go down as one of the biggest brand fumbles in history? Maybe. But it also may not matter too much in the long run because the product is still basically the same.
HBO/Max was really smart to use social media to get ahead of the jokes when the “new” brand was announced. Everyone was going to have the same jokes, so they got ahead of it and made the jokes themselves.
It’s a smart move and will actually build brand affinity because they understand that the audience thinks all of this rebranding is ridiculous. But just imagine that first meeting when the brand team told the social team that Max was changing its name again.
Why?
Originally, I thought it was a mistake to call it HBO Max. The HBO brand was known for its quality. If a new show came out on HBO, I was likely to try it out because HBO has such a great batting average when it comes creating quality shows and movies.
When AT&T (who clearly knows nothing about entertainment or branding) decided to cash in HBO’s brand and label a bunch of its crap content (the Turner shows, reality TV, etc) as HBO content, it diluted the HBO brand.
They attempted to leverage HBO to boost their other brands, but it ultimately damaged the HBO brand.
While “Max” wasn’t the best name for a streaming network, at least it allowed HBO to be HBO. Separating the content into different buckets allows HBO to regain some of its lost luster.
Marvel did something similar recently when it broke Marvel Studios into separate sub-brands. All of the TV shows were damaging the Marvel Studios brand.
Disney/Marvel knows that Marvel Studios is the cash cow. Breaking out non-movie content into sub-brands enables the audience to select the content they want to consume while establishing prestige for the Marvel Studios product
HBO was on the way to rebuilding its brand, but now that’s at risk.
The people at HBO, Max, WBD, and others will have to deal with the ridicule for a while. Lacking a cohesive brand experience is embarrassing for any organization that wants to be taken seriously.
It looks like they have no idea what they’re doing. And normally, this means their product is lacking. But if HBO/HBO Max can get back into the business of creating high-value content, all will be forgiven.
HBO/Max has had a few breakout hits over the past few years. It looked a little bleak after the end of Game of Thrones, but the HBO brand is regaining its swagger.
Let’s just hope this new change doesn’t derail the progress HBO has made.
Brand guru Scott Galloway predicts that WBD will spin these assets into its own business that doesn’t get dragged down by the cable business (similar to what Comcast just did with many of its lagging networks).
WBD knows it’s more important to the value of the company to have a strong streaming service than just a strong HBO.
It’s a great example of leveraging a strong brand for financial gain.