Our wildly successful HBO Max Instagram grid drop broke new ground in forging a whole new way to demonstrate breadth of content while expanding growth in a short amount of time. Pushing a total of 291 pieces of content on Instagram over the course of a 12-hour period, we highlighted the variety of quality content coming to the platform on launch day with a meticulously curated and masterfully designed social stunt—which fueled massive audience engagement and netted huge follower increases.

The HBO Max team sought out the experts at our agency to help them establish their social brand positioning to stand apart from other entertainment streaming competitors. Our first big initiative was to engineer the official launch of the HBO Max social channels on February 14, 2020. Using that as a vehicle to showcase the enormous breadth and depth of the HBO Max library, we pushed a total of 291 pieces of content on Instagram over the course of a 12-hour period, highlighting dozens of the best and most popular titles coming to the platform on launch day. The goal was to create massive PR buzz, and stoke early following and engagement on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter—all of which were successfully achieved. We continued to propel a strong sense of community and fandom among the brand’s growing following by continuing to develop high quality, “extremely online” content.

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.