The HBO Max team partnered with our agency to help them achieve a lofty goal: establish their social brand positioning in a way that would set it apart from—and rise above—the competing players in the streaming entertainment space. We hit the ground running, constructing a unique social brand persona and tone of voice for HBO Max that would not only separate it from the competition, but resonate with the holy grail of audience demos: younger, more social, digital natives. The secret weapon in our creative arsenal was a “fan-first” strategy, designed to engage with that socially rabid core audience through the lens of a “superfan” of all things entertainment. We then wove this “superfan” theme throughout our 360 campaign from OOH, to paid media, to organic social, to digital spots.

Ahead of the brand campaign for platform launch, we launched the official HBO Max social channels on February 14, 2020. Going full throttle in pursuit of a more social and digitally native audience, we pushed a whopping 291 pieces of content on Instagram over the course of a 12-hour period. We later created eye-popping OOH pieces that garnered national attention. Our creative tagline “WHERE HBO MEETS SO MUCH MORE,” was the match that lit the fire for our OOH campaign, enabling us to effectively showcase a multitude of entertainment brands and beloved characters all in one place. Adding to that blitz, we also rolled out a robust digital and paid social campaign, and produced a multitude of stunts, including War Rooms on Twitter and cross-platform activations that tapped all sister brands to change their profile photos and social headers to the HBO Max gradient for launch day. This highlighted the variety, quality, and immense breadth of content coming to the platform.

Blanketing all mediums, our launch and post-launch content netted massive PR buzz, which stoked early following and fan engagement across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. We fueled this momentum by continuing to develop “extremely online” content, which cultivated a strong sense of community and fandom among rapidly-growing followers in tandem with our OOH presence. To date, we’ve seen 14,204% growth on Instagram, 27,640% growth on Facebook, and 855% growth on Twitter. By the end of 2020, HBO Max was at 41.5 million subscribers domestically.