Why did they remove “HBO” from Max?

Suits.

Because the guy in charge is from outside of HBO and it seems like he felt HBO was too premium of a brand and they want a service that everyone will sign up for. I understand why he might feel that way, but it still feels like a dumb move even in that context.

quote:

---

From what I have gathered, it’s still the same app but just called Max

---

What’s New in Max: 10 Key Changes as HBO Max Relaunches With Discovery Content, Enhanced Features

While they're losing the "HBO" brand name, "Max" is likely appealing for at least a couple of reasons:
1. From a marketing standpoint, a one syllable brand name is better than a three syllable brand name.
2. Think of the easy marketing opportunities that are already built into the name (e.g., "MAXimum entertainment!").

I'm just happy they didn't take the lazy approach of adding a "+" to the name. I think "Max" is much better than "HBO+." The fad of adding pluses to streaming service names needs to die.

It is confusing because I associate "Max" with Skinemax and it gives me a pavlovian boner.

quote:

---

Why did they remove “HBO” from Max?

---

Snapple had a hugely successful ad campaign with "Wendy the Snapple Lady". Then Quaker Oats bought Snapple, and their ad agency immediately stopped the Wendy campaign and switched to a less successful campaign. Years later, when asked why they stopped what was a great set of commercials, the lead ad guy said, "When you take over an account, you have to change things. If you don't, and you have success with the previous agency's plan, they get the credit, not you."

HBO has new owners. They'll make changes, look for a success story anywhere that they can find in those changes, and take credit for the "improvements".

quote:

---

great series like

---

quote:

---

Ballers

---

i enjoyed the show and watched all of it but "great" is not the adjective i'd use.

I have been thinking the same thing. Max is Cinemax which was the inferior perverted little brother to hbo. Maybe I’m just old and the focus group doesn’t have that connection and they just know max is a word that means more

Branding is complicated, especially when you have a square peg / round hole situation like Discovery & Warner.

Originally we had HBO Go. Then Warner (AT&T?) decided they wanted to create a one-stop streaming platform to house all of their content. Putting Cartoon Network content inside the HBO Go app obviously would have been a little weird. So they rebranded to HBO Max - which works because it implies both “HBO + Cinemax” as well as “HBO + more.”

Now you have Discovery buying WarnerMedia and the Discovery execs feel like their Discovery+ streaming service is also successful. I don’t know how true that is but you can bet thats how they see it.

IMO it would make perfect sense to just roll Discovery+ into HBO Max because it still fits that “HBO and more” mold. But that would require the Discovery branding/marketing people to acknowledge that their brand is straight up inferior to HBO Max. So they change it to make it “their” branding idea instead.

This shite happens all the time with M&A among big conglomerates.

I don't get it. I think there are a lot of people, myself being one, who will give just about any series a shot if it has the HBO name attached. Not so much with MAX.

the new app isn't working on my phone, when I try to link my TV subscription for logging on