👉 Background: Warner Bros. Discovery was formed after a $43 billion mega-merger in 2022 between WarnerMedia and Discovery. In 2023, they ditched the “HBO” name from their streaming service “HBO Max” to create a new, broader brand: Max. They believed that HBO meant prestige and they wanted to broaden the appeal because it now included lifestyle content from Discovery.

👉 What happened: Problem was, nobody asked for that change and it didn’t quite max out in terms of brand recognition. While HBO was out there winning Emmys, “Max” felt like a vague distant cousin. So now, Warner Bros Discovery has announced plans to reverse the decision as it plans to go back to its HBO Max roots.

👉 What else: Nothing quite like a bit of corporate backtracking after a major misstep. It’s pretty simple - you don’t mess with a quality brand name that consumers are familiar with.

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What's the key learning?

💡Brand familiarity is more than just recognising a name, it’s a psychological shortcut. When consumers hear the HBO name, they think about premium content. The issue is that the pivot to “Max” diluted that prestige and made the Max offering feel more generic.

💡When you’re competing in a crowded streaming market with Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+, you need to have a key differentiator… and Max just wasn’t doing it. It doesn’t help that Warner Bros Discovery’s share price were down 15% since the start of this year, either.

💡We know that brand familiarity drives consumer trust, so when a company makes a sudden shift, they force users to mentally start from scratch. And that wasn't working for Warner Bros. Discovery.