Executives at Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) have decided to hit the “undo” button when it comes to the brand name of their flagship streaming service.
This summer, Max will become “HBO Max” once again, two years after the HBO name was dropped from the brand of the streaming platform — a move that was initially meant to convey to streamers and advertisers alike that the service had much more to offer than HBO’s library of movies and TV shows.
The type of content available within HBO Max won’t change when the service is rebranded in a few months, but the decision to revert to the HBO Max name is a rare, unstated concession that the change made two years ago missed the mark across the board.
“Returning the HBO brand into HBO Max will further drive the service forward and amplify the uniqueness that subscribers can expect from the offering,” a WBD spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday. “It is also a testament to WBD’s willingness to keep boldly iterating its strategy and approach – leaning heavily on consumer data and insights – to best position itself for success.”
In other words, the data and feedback WBD collected over the past two years indicates that restoring “HBO” to the streaming service’s name is the better move for long-term success.
Not that WBD hasn’t experienced business troubles with its streaming business. Quite the opposite, in fact: The service now has over 122 million streaming subscribers around the world, including 22 million customers who joined Max within the past 12 months. That, coupled with new agreements with some pay TV providers who now offer the ad-supported plan of Max within certain TV packages, has added $3 billion to WBD’s streaming business, helping it swing to profitability within the past two years.
“The powerful growth we have seen in our global streaming service is built around the quality of our programming,” David Zaslav, the President and CEO of WBD, said in a statement. “Today, we are bringing back HBO, the brand that represents the highest quality in media, to further accelerate that growth in the years ahead.”
The Max name was meant to convey that the service offered something for everyone — in addition to HBO’s slate of premium content, Max also includes original programming from WBD’s linear cable networks like TNT, Cartoon Network and CNN, as well as movies produced and distributed by Warner Bros Studios.
But the “something for everyone” approach clearly missed the mark with subscribers and advertisers alike, based on comments made by J. B. Perrette, the President and CEO of Streaming, at WBD’s UpFront presentation on Wednesday.
“We will continue to focus on what makes us unique – not everything for everyone in a household, but something distinct and great for adults and families,” Perrette said. “It’s really not subjective, not even controversial. Our programming just hits different.”
“With the course we are on and strong momentum we are enjoying, we believe HBO Max far better represents our current consumer proposition,” Casey Bloys, the Chairman and CEO of HBO and Max content, said on Wednesday. “And it clearly states our implicit promise to deliver content that is recognized as unique and, to steal a line we always said at HBO, worth paying for.”
The abrupt change comes at a time when WBD was focused on relaunching its HBO and HBO Max streaming apps into Max in other parts of the world. Streamers in countries like Australia, New Zealand and parts of Europe already have access to Max, and it isn’t clear if the app will revert to the HBO Max brand in those territories, or how quickly that change will be made.
