HBO He launched on demand on the Internet with HBO GO, which was then called HBO Now, and in the apogee of streaming it was called HBO Max. Then became Max, And now it is HBO Max again. The changes made by the Warner Bros. Discovery brand continue to generate confusion among consumers, demonstrate an inconsistent strategy, despite the fact that the company wanted to make a communicative game with it, and demonstrate, once again, The power of the HBO brand.

A week ago Warner Bros. Discovery He announced that the Max streaming platform would be renamed HBO max from this summer. The movement, according to the company in a statement, will serve to further boost service and amplify singularity and differentiation that subscribers can expect from the offer.

HBO, again

The company ensures that its streaming business enjoys a great impulse, with 22 million subscribers won in the last year, and the possibility of gathering 150 million in total by the end of 2026. It points out that this success is due to a reorientation towards a program based mainly on the content quality, And not in volume, as with his rivals.

“Today no consumer says they want more content, but most say they want better content”, Explain from Warner Bros. Discovery.“While other services meet the most basic needs with great volume, WBD has clearly distinguished itself by its quality and unique stories, and no brand has done it better and more consistent for more than 50 years than HBO”

The company points out that HBO is the brand that represents the highest quality in media universe and the return will serve to continue promoting growth in the coming years. Warner Bros. Discovery explains that HBO Max It represents your current consumer much better communicating the Implicit promise to offer content recognized as unique and for which it is worth paying.

From this position both of marketing and the consumers themselves, infer that the initial rebranding, the one made in April 2023 to only Max, is A strategic error that the company seeks to amend now with the recovery of the HBO brand. At the time, that transformation was criticized since it considered that the company dispensed with decades of legacy, prestige and positioning associated with HBO.

That decision was made, to a large extent, to attract a broader and more familiar audience, and disconnect from the perception of avant -garde and adult content that prevailed among consumers. In addition, according to the company at the time, a part of the spectators was not interested in HBO for its price and for their association to an intellectual elite.

Humor and self -reference

The brand has chosen andThe humor and self -reference in order to publicize the change. Thus, both on the day of the announcement, and those who have followed later, have published various memes that joke precisely with the multiple changes of denomination made in recent years. For this, he has resorted to some of his most iconic titles, such as “Game of Thrones”, “Euphoria”, “Friends” or “The of Us”.

The change generated conversation on social networks, to which both users and competition brands have joined.

The change has revived the confusion around the different divisions of the brand, which in turn pose a reflection of a complex corporate network. In this sense, many consumers still do not distinguish between HBO -the cable television channel -HBO Max -the streaming service -and the previous brands HBO GO and HBO Now.
Something similar happens with the parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, formed from the combination of the business of the Discovery and Warnermedia entertainment company, owned by the AT&T telecommunication conglomerate.

HBO’s return

However, this last change brings positive things. One of them, the alignment of the brand with the habits and everyday of consumers, many of which They have not finished adopting the name Max and have continued referring to the platform as HBO. A situation similar to the one that is going through X with Twitter, an issue, by the way, also commented by the company.

The recovery of the HBO brand is the return to the perception of value and quality, After a period in which the company has tried to emulate Netflix addressing a more generalist audience. The association to the iconicity that surrounds HBO will favor differentiation through positioning around Easily recognizable attributes.

In a moment of economic uncertainty, in which consumer behavior is deeply determined by the search for savings, value transmission through the brand It becomes a critical issue for business survival.

In the case of HBO, a brand with more than fifty years of history, the link to prestige will attract those consumers who seek content quality above the amount. In a context saturated with impacts, in which even the enormous streaming offer can overwhelm the spectators, transfer a good balance in the quality-price binomial is key.