SMH: after foolishly removing ‘HBO’ a few years ago, we’re back to ‘HBO Max’

In a move that has many of us saying, “Well, duh,” Warner Bros. Discovery has announced it’s walking back a major branding decision and will be renaming its primary streaming service from “Max” back to “HBO Max” this summer. This comes roughly two years after the company made the head-scratching choice to drop the iconic “HBO” from the name: a decision that, for many of us who grew up with HBO as the gold standard of premium television, felt like a massive blunder from the start.

The original shift to just “Max” in May 2023 was met with a collective wave of confusion right away. For decades, the HBO brand built a reputation synonymous with quality television. It’s Not TV. It’s HBO. always felt like more than just a tagline, and it signified a special caliber of storytelling, from “The Sopranos” and “The Wire” to “Game of Thrones” and “Succession.” HBO carried a certain weight and definitely provided immediate recognition.

So, when the decision was made to remove that identity by transitioning to the more generic “Max,” it felt like a huge miss from a marketing standpoint. The argument at the time was to make the service feel more inclusive of all its content, but in doing so, it risked making the HBO name feel less special and less distinct. It stripped away the clarity and prestige that the HBO name inherently carried with it.

Bringing HBO back

Now, fast forward to this week, and WBD executives are essentially saying the quiet part out loud. In announcing the return to “HBO Max,” CEO David Zaslav stated, “Today, we are bringing back HBO, the brand that represents the highest quality in media, to further accelerate that growth in the years ahead.” Others at WBD acknowledged that “no consumer today is saying they want more content, but most consumers are saying they want better content,” and that “no brand has done that better and more consistently over 50+ years than HBO.”

It’s a validation of what most of us felt all along: the HBO brand is a special, not something to be hidden away. The attempt to create a “something for everyone” streamer under a generic name straight-up ignored the decades of brand-building that made HBO a destination. As many have pointed out as this news has arrived, most people likely never stopped calling it “HBO Max” anyway (I know I didn’t).

This re-rebranding is a clear admission that the initial strategy wasn’t hitting the mark and that the power of the HBO name is too significant to ignore. While the streaming landscape is fiercely competitive, and finding the right formula is challenging, this particular branding journey feels like a silly detour.

Re-centering the HBO brand within the streaming offering doesn’t just make sense from a legacy perspective; it provides clarity for consumers and leverages one of the strongest reputations in entertainment history. Welcome back, HBO Max. Honestly, you never should have left.