HBO Max Is HBO Max Again

It was never really "Max"

You’re reading this right now, so I presume you’re old enough to remember New Coke.

Forty(!) years ago last month, the Coca-Cola Company unveiled its answer to the increasing popularity of Pepsi. New Coke was supposed to taste better than Coke and Pepsi, according to those “blind taste tests” the industry was so fond of back then.

The company threw tons of marketing money at the new product, even enlisting the most ‘80s guy ever:

“Catch the wave!” Wow, exciting!

But the only thing Coca-Cola caught was flak. People who liked Coke really liked Coke, and this new stuff just didn’t taste right to us. Was it more of an emotional attachment than anything else? Maybe. But either way, the new formula bombed hard.

So just a few months later, the original formula was reintroduced as Coca-Cola Classic. You could buy both, but who liked both? A few years after that, New Coke became Coke II, and eventually it became a memory. Coca-Cola Classic went back to being just plain Coca-Cola.

It took over 15 years for Coke to become… Coke. All that time and money was wasted solving a problem they only created for themselves.

Which brings us to another Max:

Max!

You know, Max? The streaming service? The one that literally everybody still calls HBO Max, because Max is just some dude’s name?

You’ll never guess what just happened. Jennifer Maas, Variety:

Turns out, Warner Bros. Discovery thinks HBO has some pretty good brand equity, after all. This summer, streamer Max will bend the knee and rebrand back to its original name, HBO Max…

In a press release, WBD said “returning the HBO brand into HBO Max will further drive the service forward and amplify the uniqueness that subscribers can expect from the offering. 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.”

Yeah yeah, blah blah blah. I got somethin’ you can boldly iterate right here.

Translated into English: “We screwed the pooch, and now we’re just gonna pretend you all didn’t see it.”

I don’t know what planet these marketing people are from, but it’s nuts that it took them two full years to realize this rebranding wasn’t working. Who ever said, “That movie just premiered on Max,” or “I’m thinking of signing up for Max”? Nobody would know what you were talking about.

HBO threw out its universally recognized brand on a whim. It was like McDonald’s suddenly changing its name to Steve.

So now, the same people who got paid to ruin the HBO brand are now getting paid to bring it back. Too bad they can’t toast their brilliant plan with some New Coke.

Let’s just hope Elon Musk is paying attention. Twitter is Twitter, not X!

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Jake Tapper is promoting his new book about how the White House lied to everybody about Biden being a zombie, which is pretty weird considering he was one of Joe’s biggest defenders at the time. You can find the receipts at Fox News and The Federalist.

“Here’s why it’s not my fault the Democrats blew it.” That’s all this stuff is. If Biden had somehow won, they’d still be pretending he’s at his peak. But I’m sure Tapper and the rest of them will sell some books anyway, because honesty has no place in journalism.

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