HBO MAX Becoming MAX is a Branding Blunder Beyond Belief

I would love to have been in the pitch meeting where the execs at Warner Bros Studios were "sold" on the idea of dumping the iconic HBO branding in favor of Max (yes, the 'a' and 'x' are lowercase). What could have been the convincing-argument that pushed the C-suite at Warner to green light squashing a 51-year-old brand, in HBO, in favor of a word that has zero SEO value? Not to mention that HBO had, until it's demise a mere three days ago, global brand recognition and a history of some of the best TV series ever on the planet.

This is a HUGE mistake!

HBO is a cable-TV iconic brand that found a way to adapt over-and-over again, very successfully. One of the first cable-TV stations, it gained a following quickly, after its founding, by becoming the first channel dedicated to showing theatrical movie releases a few years after they played in the theaters themselves. By the end of the 70's, it was the most popular cable-TV channel, too. Then, in the 1980's, they started creating their own TV series with iconic shows like The Sopranos, Sex in the City, and The Wire. And, for decades, they have been the go-to network for Sunday night entertainment with shows like Veep, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Game of Thrones, Deadwood, and the most talked-about TV show if 2023, Succession.

And, every show has started with the memorable video noise, then a bong followed by the HBO logo:

Now, it's all been dumped (er, replaced), in what can only be assumed was an irrational reaction to some unknown force, by the word (thus brand) Max. Yes, Max. A word that comes from the last three letters of another TV network that HBO sister company, Discovery, launched back in 1980, Cinemax. A brand that has had nearly no global recognition or recall.

Really? That's the best they could have come up with to replace a brand with a 50+ year run of top-10 TV content and some of history's highest-rated TV dramas and comedies. HBO is a network with 38 Emmy Awards. And, in Rolling Stone Magazine's list of Top-100 TV shows of all-time, HBO has seven in the top 20.

Do you know how many Emmys Cinemax has won? Do you know how many of those top 20 TV shows Cinemax has? ZERO. Yes, ZERO. They don't even have any in the top 100.

This is insane madness. What was Warner Bros thinking? The HBO brand, the HBO app, and the HBO service were not only icons of nearly every cable-TV subscriber but it's also one of the top three downloaded streaming apps of all time. And now, after a week that saw HBO become Max, according to New York Magazine, the Max streaming app is plagued with a plethora of glitches and bugs.

MAX is a Branding Blunder Beyond Belief...