Why Max Decided to Lose ‘HBO’ in Its Name

Submitted ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨realcaseyrollins⁩ to ⁨moviesandtv@lemm.ee⁩

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-max-decided-to-lose-hbo-in-its-name-4d888c96?mod=e2li

‘HBO’ was excised from the name of Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming service earlier this year. Now its global CMO has to coax subscribers into seeing it as more than the HBO library, encompassing news and sports.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-max-decided-to-lose-hbo-in-its-name-4d888c96?mod=e2li

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scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
oh my GOD do people actually buy this shit that corpos spew? I’m going to copy these paragraphs here for everyone to really read:

WSJ: HBO has been an iconic brand for decades. How did the company come to the decision to move away from including it in the name of its streaming platform?

Spagnoletto: HBO is an iconic brand that stands for premium quality content, with stories that are world-renowned, from “The Sopranos” to “House of the Dragon.” The equity of that brand served very well when the company launched HBO Max.

The decision actually became a pretty simple one. Do you kill “HBO Max” or do you kill “HBO”? Because you can’t have both. You can’t have “HBO” in the name and then put this incredibly varied library under it and expect consumers to have the same equity in the brand.

WSJ: So HBO lives on underneath the Max name as a brand.

Spagnoletto: The analogy I like to use is that of a mosaic. A mosaic has made many tiles that—put together—have this bigger image. The new mosaic is Max. Under that, one of the big tiles is HBO, but it’s not the only tile. We had to make room for Warner Bros. theatrical, the Discovery shows, news and sports.

Okay, so first thanks for reading it. Some key translations from corpo marketing bullshit speak to plain English:

HBO is considered premium, and we wanted to shove our extra cheaper crap on there. We knew this would tarnish the HBO brand name, so we just cut it out.

I’m going to try to trick readers by using the bullshit term “mosaic” when really we’re hooking you up to the firehose with our cheaper more profitable content so you don’t cancel in between seasons of Game of Thrones.

Seriously, does anyone believe the marketing doublespeak anymore? (Sadly I know, most do)
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- realcaseyrollins ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I mean I thought it was pretty obvious. Why else would they have renamed HBO Max to Max? It's a branding issue that's plagued Netflix, nobody knows what to expect when they hear "Netflix announces new show premiering next year"
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ll take Stupidity for $100, Alex.

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- realcaseyrollins ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It's a branding thing, they didn't want to mess with the HBO brand.
  
  Kinda silly since "HBO Max" is a different brand than "HBO" and had its own subrands such as "HBO Max Family", but I get it.