Max was an all-time bad rebrand

Max, formerly HBO Max, is now HBO Max again. Warner Bros. Discovery announced the change today, rolling back one of the clumsiest rebrands in history from a streaming service that’s had more than its share of clumsy ideas.

Right from the start, it seemed like everyone outside of Warner Bros. Discovery knew the change was a bad one. The first takes were brutal, like this take from Design Matters host Debbie Millman in a Fast Company story:

“I am completely bewildered by the HBO Max rebrand,” says Debbie Millman, a designer, brand consultant, and host of the Design Matters podcast. “HBO took four decades of prestige and casually tossed it all into a dumpster, lit a match, and cheered as it burned.”

According to the company, the problem with HBO Max was the HBO part. There is an important lesson here, which is that your brand is not what you call your streaming service. Your brand is the way your customers feel about whatever you make. In this case, the feelings are pretty clear–this is a bad idea.

Digs at the rebrand are littered all over the place. Like an Engadget story headlined, “Sure, ‘Max’ sounds dumb, but HBO Max needed a reboot.” Or this Vulture quiz headlined, “Is This Streaming Service Real or Did We Make It Up,” which jokes that Max is “a straight-up proper name that could belong to actual people you know.”

Fast forward to March. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos even got in on the action, calling out the absurdity of HBO’s wackadoo rebrands. Here’s what he said when Variety asked about WBD dropping “HBO” from “HBO Max”:

It was a surprise! We would always watch what HBO was doing, and at one point they had HBO, HBO Go, HBO Now and HBO Max. And I said, “When they’re serious, all those names will go away, and it’ll just be HBO.” I would have never guessed HBO would have gone away. They put all that effort into one thing that they can tell the consumer — it should be HBO.

Of course it should be HBO! We all know what HBO is! To put it in WBD head of streaming JB Perrette’s own words after the rebrand, HBO is “a brand that has been built over five decades.” It’s the network that brought us The Sopranos and The Wire. The excellent Barry. It’s where everyone tuned in to watch Game of Thrones.

Max had none of that, but that was the point, according to Perrette. HBO was known for its edginess, and WBD wanted its streaming service to be more of a family-friendly affair. What seemingly never occurred to it, though, was that it replaced HBO with a name that hasn’t brought anyone anything, ever. WBD threw out the baby with the bathwater.

To its credit, WBD is handling the switch back to HBO Max in the best way possible: by charging directly at it with all the confidence of Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner into a fake tunnel. Here’s Adam Bader, a WBD director of product who works on the HBO Max streaming app for the Vision Pro:

And the official HBO X account:

Meanwhile, the Max account went with a pope joke:

According to Variety in 2023, Perrette said one of the reasons WBD made the switch was because it “was short, tight. Says something universal.” He added that he and the other senior execs were already using “Max” as shorthand for HBO Max. It’s vindicating now to see the company seem to admit that maybe it went a little far by confusing their office slang with brand recognition. HBO is back — let’s hope the quality stays, too.