HBO Max Enters Hall of Fame of Corporate Brand Reversals Alongside Netflix, Coca-Cola

HBO is synonymous with great television — and now HBO Max, the re-rechristened name of Warner Bros. Discovery’s linchpin streaming service, is synonymous with major corporate reversals.

There is little doubt about that, after WBD announced Wednesday that it was changing the name of Max back to HBO Max, the name it ditched in 2023. This is the fifth name for HBO’s streaming service in the past 11 years: HBO Go, HBO Now, HBO Max, Max and, once again, HBO Max.

“Maybe the fifth time will be the charm,” one Hulu manager joked to TheWrap about its rival’s name change.

HBO Max, you could easily argue, is now the Mona Lisa, Michael Jordan and “The Sopranos” of corporate 180s. But there are other contenders for the top prize in what could be called the Corporate Pivot Hall-of-Fame.

Netflix begets Qwikster

If you asked veteran Netflix investors, they would say the streaming giant makes plenty of great moves — and its share price being up 86% in the last year would support that claim. But not every decision has been a winner.

Notably, in 2011, co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings decided to split its DVD rental business and its nascent streaming service into two separate operations. The DVD-by-mail business would be dubbed “Qwikster,” and customers would have to pay for each service separately — combined they would cost $15.98, compared to the $10 a month subscribers had been paying for both.

The result? Customers revolted. Netflix lost 800,000 American subscribers during the third quarter of 2011, and the company’s share price was sliced in half.

After only a few months, Netflix had to reverse course. While the price hike remained in place, Netflix announced it was ditching its plan to spin off its DVD rental business. The “Qwikster” name was jettisoned too, and everything remained under the Netflix banner.

“I messed up,” Hastings told Netflix customers in a 2011 email.

Viacom-CBS, together again

Like two exes deciding to give it another go, Viacom and CBS reunited in 2019, 13 years after the media behemoths split apart.

The reconciliation was driven by Shari Redstone in a move that undid her father Sumner Redstone’s decision to split the media companies apart back in ’06. Shari Redstone’s belief was the new ViacomCBS — which has since been renamed Paramount Global — could compete better with streaming heavyweights like Netflix as a single entity. The 2019 merger was a $12 billion all-cash deal.

This was a familiar path for both companies, too. Viacom was initially spun off from CBS in the early 1970s, before the two merged in 2000. When it comes to breaking up and getting back together, Viacom and CBS are the corporate version of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez.

Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog” U-turn

Here is Exhibit A of when the fan reaction is so bad that it forces an entertainment company to pivot ASAP.

When Paramount released the trailer for its first “Sonic the Hedgehog” flick in 2019, the fan reaction was brutal. Why? Because the beloved blue video-game character did not resemble the hedgehog Sega fans had come to know and love.

As TheWrap explained at the time, “Sonic’s look has been compared to Mike Myers in the live-action ‘The Cat in the Hat,’ to the Woody Woodpecker live-action movie made for a fraction of the budget, or to that kid who turns into a werewolf in Robin Williams’ ‘Jumanji.'”

None of that was good, and it forced Paramount to postpone the movie’s release by three months so that Sonic could be revamped. The move paid off, with “Sonic” bringing in $320 million at the box office — more than triple its budget — and spawning sequels.

New Coke, we hardly knew ye

This one may not be tied directly to the entertainment world, but it had to be mentioned — because when it comes to botched corporate revamps, “New Coke” is the first thing most people think of. At least it had the advantage of happening during the 1980s, sparing it from the barrage of social media jokes that the Max/HBO Max backtracking triggered.

Back in 1985, Coca-Cola aimed to combat lagging sales by introducing “New Coke,” which offered a “smoother, rounder, yet bolder” take on its classic formula. Consumers hated the change, with many believing the sweeter “New Coke” tasted like old Pepsi.

The company pivoted less than three months later, bringing back the old formula as “Coca-Cola Classic” — a move that helped jumpstart sales. New Coke was renamed Coke II in 1990, before being abandoned altogether in 2002.

The post HBO Max Enters Hall of Fame of Corporate Brand Reversals Alongside Netflix, Coca-Cola appeared first on TheWrap.