Bad Branding to the Max!

Recently HBO Max just became Max and of course a lot of people on the Internet had things to say.  And being the Internet, a lot of them were dumb and/or ignorant.  On the Chive they posted a meme that was factually wrong, but it got me thinking about the paths HBO and its owners took to get to this point.

The meme on the Chive wrongly said HBO Go became HBO Now.  In fact the two things co-existed early on in the streaming era.  The idea was like this:

• HBO Go was for people like me who already had HBO through their cable provider
• HBO Now was for people who didn't already have HBO but wanted to stream the content

And that's how it was for a few years.  Then a couple of years ago HBO Max consolidated the two platforms into one new app.  If you already had HBO you could login and use it free.  Or if you didn't you could create a login and pay to use it.

So far it all pretty much makes sense.  The Go/Now thing was clumsy but this was still pretty early in the streaming era so it makes sense that maybe they didn't have the technical wizardry yet to do both in one app.  Eventually they probably realized that was confusing customers and potential customers and thus created HBO Max to consolidate them.  Though I would have appreciated a heads-up that I could use my HBO account to access it as for months I didn't realize that.

But this latest change makes sense--and doesn't make sense.  I think the idea was born from the merger of WB and Discovery.  The big corporate honchos then wanted a streaming app.  But:

• HBO Max is too closely tied to HBO and not other things like Discovery and WB.
• Calling it "WB Plus" or "Discovery Plus" would not acknowledge the content available from the other.  Also, "Discovery Plus" is already a thing which apparently they're not folding into "Max" just yet.

And so they probably hired some high-priced marketing consultant to come up with the stupid idea of just calling it "Max."  That way it's not tied to HBO, WB, or Discovery.  But also it's not tied to anything at all.  If you ask me, "Max" makes me think of a dog or the Max Havoc movies on Rifftrax.  It does not invoke a streaming service.

An NPR article pretty much agrees with me:

Zaslav already has just shut down his overseas equivalent of Turner Classic Movies in the U.K. And he's the guy who, since taking over the reins at Warner Bros. Discovery, already has turned HBO Max into just Max, which makes no sense — devaluing his own HBO brand.

It actually reminds me of the 90s when a fad was changing a radio station to the name of a person:  Doug, Alice, and so on.  They parodied this on Mystery Science Theater 3000 when the evil mad scientists create a country station called "Frank."  There probably wasn't a "Max" as it's too short, but it's the same kinda thing, innit?

And the same problem with those named stations was the name itself doesn't invoke anything.  Would you be able to guess what kind of music "Alice" played just from the name?  Probably not.  Though if you thought of rocker Alice Cooper you might get it.

It also reminds me of when Netflix was going to call its DVD service "Qwikster" for...reasons.  That also got dragged by the Internet and rightfully so; it is a pretty idiotic name.  And like "Max" it really didn't invoke what it was supposed to invoke.  I mean if I asked you if you tried "Qwikster" you might think it's a delivery service or something like Grubhub or something, right?  Which Grubhub actually invokes what it is:  a hub for getting grub.  Just like Doordash dashes things to your door.  Or Lyft gives you a lift.  Uber does not invoke anything but it's the kind of thing where it was fresh enough and got enough popularity right away that it didn't need to invoke anything.  Maybe with all the attention "Max" is getting for its shitty name, that will happen for it.  Or maybe they'll have to hire another high-priced consultant to come up with something even dumber.

Looking at the competition, Netflix invoked what it was:  you could watch flix on the Net!  Or at first it was really order your flix through the Net.  Amazon Prime Video is videos you watch with Amazon Prime.  Paramount+ and Disney+ are streaming stuff from Paramount and Disney respectively.  Then you get the less invocative ones like Hulu or Crackle.  Tubi makes a little sense in that it's like the tube on the Internet.  (Its original name of TubiTV made more sense.)  YouTube was again the tube but you decided what to watch--or put on it.  So a lot of those make sense in some way.

When choosing a title for a book or game or something else, I always think it's good to have something that does invoke what it's supposed to be.  I mean if you're writing a kid's book you probably don't want to call it "The Slaughter of Innocents."  Or if you're writing a horror book you probably don't want to call it "Sunny Fun Time."  Unless you're being ironic.  I'm not sure if that would work or not.

As for "Max" I was thinking a better name might have been DiscoverWB as it invokes both Discovery and WB.  And "discover" invokes the mission of the app, which is to discover things to watch.  But maybe then people would still think it was just WB.  Maybe "DiscoveryWB" or "WBDiscovery?"