The HBO Max team partnered with our agency to help establish a unique social brand positioning that would make them an unstoppable wave in a sea of entertainment streaming competitors. Starting with the official launch of the HBO Max social channels on February 14, 2020, we dove in head first. With our goal of showcasing the breadth and depth of the HBO Max library in mind, we pushed a staggering 291 pieces of content on Instagram over the course of a 12-hour period. This all-out campaign was created to ensure awareness of the immense treasure trove of premium content coming to the platform on launch day. This resulted in a mass PR buzz, and stoked an early following and engagement across social channels. We expanded this advantage by continuing to develop high quality, “extremely online” content and cultivate a strong sense of community and fandom among the growing following.

To achieve our objective of helping the HBO Max team establish their social brand positioning to stand apart from other entertainment streaming competitors, we began by constructing a unique social brand persona and tone of voice for HBO Max designed to resonate with a younger, more social, and digitally native audience. As a pillar of that plan, we built a strategy rooted in a fan-first mentality, enticing the core audience to connect and engage through the lens of a ‘superfan’ of all things entertainment. The strategy allowed us to gain a deep understanding of the audience and brand persona we cultivated through an organic social presence, which in turn gave us the keen insights needed to successfully execute a variety of seamless and complementary digital, social, and OOH campaigns for HBO Max.

To establish an online brand for HBO Max we immediately started creating a unique social brand persona and tone of voice designed to entice and engage the key audience: 18-34, heavily social, primarily female, and digitally native. Given the mindset of this demographic, we chose a ‘fan-first’ strategy, crafting all our campaigns around the central theme of being the ‘superfan’ of all things entertainment. From this concept sprung the tactic of our Instagram Takeover, during which we pushed 291 pieces of content within a 12-hour period—and succeeded in garnering massive PR buzz as well as an early following and engagement on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

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.

Blazing a new social media trail, we created an interconnected 291-panel grid takeover on Instagram posted over the course of 12 hours. Our social media strategy was to seize the attention of a young audience through design elements like a beautifully curated Instagram grid featuring fan-favorite quotes from IP. We took this opportunity to get fans excited about cult classics that had previously been unavailable and new HBO Max content. The Instagram grid launch culminated in the reveal of the first official teaser spot for HBO Max. Each row of design was created with the specific IP it was representing in mind, perfectly capturing the show or film’s tone in only 3 Instagram posts. During the making of the grid pieces, our community management team was hard at work strategizing how to execute this massive undertaking successfully. Needless to say, we nailed it.

Launch day was a blazing success, resulting not only in garnering massive PR buzz, but also fueling early following and engagement across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for the HBO Max brand. The impressive numbers speak for themselves: 88% follower increase on Facebook, and 225% increase on Instagram, all between Feb. 13 and Feb. 16. Building from that solid vantage point, we continued to develop premium social content and cultivate a strong sense of community and fandom among the growing following. As this community grew in quantity, it also elevated in quality, becoming a go-to location for fans to gather and connect—which was exactly the kind of invaluable social engagement HBO Max was seeking for its brand.