Why Quality Brands Can Never Truly Hide Behind New Names

Chapters

• 0:00 HBO Max Returns to Its Roots
• 1:47 Brand Equity vs Brand Recognition
• 5:15 Warner Bros Discovery Strategic Rebranding
• 7:22 Reasons Companies Rebrand
• 9:20 Effective Branding Principles
• 12:55 Commoditizing the Ordinary

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to this episode of the NerdBrand Podcast. It's a little belated, but we got some Brandon news, got some other things going on. Last episode we listened to about Starry and why Starry rebranded, so let's talk about HBO up next. Welcome to this episode of the NerdBrand Podcast. Thank you for listening to my ramblings, and we're going to talk a little bit about why HBO Max may have gone back to HBO Max instead of just staying as Max.

Speaker 1: 0:49

A couple of opinions One, maybe the entertainment has kind of not been great lately, but that probably is not the issue. I would say, just as an outsider's perspective, a former subscriber to the service, that maybe the brand equity wasn't as much in the name Max as there was in the name HBO. I remember when I was younger, hbo had this really awesome opener. If you had back in the days of when you just had cable there's no such thing as internet streaming you would know that you're watching an HBO movie because of the way that it would open up. It would go around the O and it would look like it's a you know, I don't know spiral thing, but anyways, that was called the early days of After Effects, an engine that was used to edit and provide special effects for, like, for example, the movie Deadpool, and so it was sort of on the forefront of that and that opener. Ever since then you knew the name HBO and it sort of seared it into your memory, because every time you watched a movie from the studios that had that, that's what you saw on their channel. So fast forward, several years later and here we are and they're doing HBO Max, the streaming service for HBO, though I don't think it was the first one or first attempt, but definitely was the biggest one they went at a go at. So HBO, everyone knew Home Box Office, by the way, is what that stands for, and you know it's like, you know, having a theater in your house.

Speaker 1: 2:25

I remember everybody got the 5.1, I think is what they call it surround sound, and that's basically where you have a receiver, two speakers on each side, a center one and two, you know, on each side of your viewership behind you, so you can have surround sound. Now we just have that out of normal speakers. I mean, technology has just for audio. Audio has extremely, um, you know, accelerated, but anyhow, hbo itself goes to HBO max and then everybody's like we, and you know it's sort of it's great.

Speaker 1: 2:55

And then they renamed to max and then they stopped calling themselves HBO and you know the reasonings for that. I'm like I said, this is just my opinion, but I just think that the brand equity is not well. It just wasn't there with Max or it doesn't resonate with people, so they went back to that. And for those of you that don't know, this is Warner Brothers. I mean, it's technically now it's Warner Brothers Discovery, so they are the ones that initiated the renaming back. So it's sort of this part of their HBO brand's reputation trying to create premium content.

Speaker 1: 3:37

And I think that the switch ups that are happening with some brands out there and returning to what is familiar is strategic due to the fact that it kind of brings it back to. I recognize that, I trust that and that's where we're getting to. We're coming into an age where branded content is unique, content that you know comes from that specific place business, brand, person and isn't some replication of that that is cheaper. It's not the mainstays brand that you go find in Walmart, it's actually XYZ name brand, right, and I'll be honest, I'm one of these people that if I have an off brand of cereal or Coke or whatever, I can't do it, it's hard for me to like no, I need the name brand. It tastes better and all that. So I think a lot of people know that, even if that may be psychological or real or not I don't know, I'm not a psychologist but when it comes to branding, a lot of it deals with how much do I trust this brand. That just incentivizes to buy again and to keep buying and to stay loyal to that brand. It makes marketing easier when that's the case, because you don't have to convince people why they should buy it. You just sort of have to now remind them about it and you have to continuously show that you are that trusted brand that you could always rely upon.

Speaker 1: 5:15

It's something that is, I think, going to come up more and more just because of how things are changing. Just pulled it up here on my screen now HBO Go. That's what it was. It was that that was the predecessor. Okay, so, yeah, so anyways. Hbo was bought out by Discovery, so was Warner Brothers, and now we're back to HBO Max People. Just again. It's very simple. If you Google it, people just associate the HBO brand with quality content and you know, I remember some of the movies that would come out on HBO. Now, through the years the brand has gone through a lot of evolutions. Yes, you know, warner Brothers Discovery is obviously trying to tap into that so that it can win the streaming wars, even though I think a lot of that is probably past. I think Netflix has already won come out on top, it's just one of those things.

Speaker 1: 6:14

But this rebrand just didn't come out of left field. I mean it was on stage. I mean, during Warner Brothers Discovery's upfront presentation to its advertisers, the chief executive officer, casey Boyd, announced that the company's streaming platform Max would revert back to its previous name, hbo Max. So Warner Brothers Discovery executives emphasized that it was a move to emphasize its strongest offerings, which is a very clever way of saying like our content's better than your content Nanner, nanner offerings, which is a very clever way of saying like our content's better than your content, nanner nanner. So what do we expect now that it's been renamed Like? What does that mean? Like the content's now going to be premium and better? I don't think we'll know right now. I don't think we can know. I mean it's if you're an HBO Max fan, good for you. If not, okay. Well, you know that's cool too, but that is one example of going back because the equity was there and that is why they wanted to return to that. So I just thought that was interesting after we just talked about Starry and what just happened there. It's not sexy, but, you know, not as much as Starry was pun intended, but that's pretty much it.

Speaker 1: 7:22

So rebranding is going to happen because you got an outdated identity. What is your identity? Well, it's anything visual about your brand. That includes digital properties and online presence as well. Shift and target audience is going to happen in your evolution. Your business strategy will require a rebrand. This is not marketing. By the way, I had somebody yesterday ask me about marketing and branding and hearing the two. It's not a this or that, it's a both hand. It's just sometimes one comes before the other and there's a reason for that and that depends on the strategy Standing out.

Speaker 1: 7:53

If you're struggling to stand out, a rebrand can help. You have internal confusion or consistency issues, you have a negative perception and you need a lot of crisis management. Maybe you just need to do a rebrand and a rename in order to distance yourself from that like sorry, so you have outgrown your name or identity. You know that's something that can happen. A lot of people don't really understand like that's possible to outgrow something and you have to become something new. Well, what is that? So I would embrace minimalism in whatever you do. We'll ask our creative director when he joins the show again later this month.

Speaker 1: 8:32

But embracing minimalism, it's just simple design, trends, forms. It's very clean lines, a very limited color palette. Those seem to be very popular. I would point to the RTD drink mark, the rated drink market. You know you look at Celsius. You look at, like a lot of these others, that it's a really good case study in where they started out with a very, very busy can design and they've over, they, iterated over time and that iteration actually showed that it increased sales when they finally simplified things, because when you put that drink next to others on a shelf, you you want to stand out visually, but they also want to stand out message wise too. So go look up Celsius. It's a great case study on how creative can influence revenue, and so if you don't have the top of the line creative, then you know.

Speaker 1: 9:28

Also, I would also hint that you go and look at the movie industry right now. There was a great. Well, it wasn't a great trailer, but it's a trailer that shows that when you compare it to the 1980 movie of Predator and you look at the new Predator movie coming out, the CGI effects are bad, so bad, and it doesn't instill audience confidence to go to the theater and watch this thing. The CGI, I know. Maybe they released the trailer early, I don't know, but it just looks really, really awful.

Speaker 1: 10:05

So, anyhow, focus on authenticity, prioritize reliability and emotion, and use bold and condensed fonts, in moderation though, and you know, those are things that will, I think, include, that will help you raise your, your brand, not just awareness, but its equity, which again goes back to the HBO Max thing, where HBO has all the brand equity and Max was still struggling with that, because everybody knows Disney+ and everybody knows. If I was to say Hulu, if I was to say you know, whatever, you would recognize it, but Macs, you know. So leverage creative. And then you know there's tons of places for you to go out and look at these examples and how they could actually be of use and help. So I am going to go back a bit and describe what is branding and this is just me, but you can Google these things. But if you're unsure about the meaning of branding. It can be vague, because it's not necessarily something. That is a clear answer, in my opinion, because it depends on what exactly are you working on. Because it depends on what exactly are you working on.

Speaker 1: 11:28

I've used the example a lot where people want to have their brand be memorable and it's like okay, let's go back where Apple wasn't the first name you thought of and the first name you thought of was Steve Jobs. Everybody knew Steve Jobs. Everybody knew Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple. His name sort of came out first before Apple. Does anybody know who Tim Cook is? That's not a bad thing if you don't, and I'm sure he's fine with it. I guarantee it. But he's the CEO of Apple now and has been since Steve passed away. So, but you know Apple, but do you remember Macintosh? They were called that. People would say Macintosh, apple Macintosh, they had a different name. Way would say Macintosh, apple, macintosh, they had a different name way back. Things just evolve, is all I'm saying.

Speaker 1: 12:09

So you want to have a brand that can evolve, but broadly, anything can be offered to a market to satisfy a want or a need, or physical goods, services, experiences, events, person places, properties. No, I'm not saying nouns, organizations, information, ideas like that. That's pretty much a broad definition. When you put visual items out like a logo, or you put out a website or you put out an ad, those are expressions of your brand that you're trying to communicate into those markets, of what that is and the value of it. But let's say, let's look at a very plain and I have a pun intended here water, freely available resource, essentially for every human being to live and survive, right, I think. What is it? 48 hours and you can't really go without water or something like that.

Speaker 1: 13:01

But it became a product the day that we decided to commercialize it. We started putting mineral, we say mineral water, we put it in plastic bottles and we put a label on it and we started saying like this is mineral water and it's from here, and then this one's from here, and then all of a sudden, water became commoditized and it's a brand. You know, nestle's over here, and then you got these other high-end ones over here and then you got sparkling water. It's just one of these things where they took something simple like that and created a brand out of nothing. It's amazing.

Speaker 1: 13:39

A brand is a name, it's a term, it's design. It's a symbol, it's any feature that identifies that good or service that's distinct from other sellers. That's a definition from the American Marketing Association. Shine a light on as how you can take something and create brands and now there's like several different, you know, bottled water companies and they all have their own distinct logos. They have their own distinct messages and how the water is and what it comes from At the end of the day.

Speaker 1: 14:13

Um, I would be very interested to see if anybody's going to get a bunch of these and put them together and then do some testing and see if it's actually, if there's any differentiator as far as ingredients between each of the brands that are out there that exist. I think that would be interesting. If you know of an example like that, please submit it to us and let us know. But in the meantime, I hope this episode was interesting to you and useful. It's kind of a blast of different information at once. It's been a crazy week and so I hope this. You know not sound like an AI robot, but I hope this podcast finds you well and you'll tune in next week for another episode of the NerdBrand podcast. And remember, keep your NerdBrand strong.