Max (formerly HBO Max) was looking to create a deeper connection between Gen Z and young Millennials and their programming. The "Max Pop" (@onmaxpop) social channels were created to establish a presence with and build a community among this demographic, ultimately encouraing more streaming and exploration of the HBO and Max programming catalog.
We developed a social strategy and presence for "Max Pop" with a goal of driving engagement, preference, and cultural relevance with this specific audience. We recognized quickly the importance of utilizing memes to achieve these goals.
In order to connect this younger audience to HBO and Max programming, we developed a comprehensive social strategy for "Max Pop" that positioned their social channels as "the group chat everyone wants to be a part of." We used that strategy and positioning to inform a content approach and social persona that used programming in a way that made their content and channels feel like our followers were just texting or DMing their friends about their favorite titles, talent, and trends.
A big part of that strategy: memes.
By "meme-ing" moments from HBO and Max programming, we were able to use titles and talent to speak the language of our audience, tie programming to culture's biggest moments, build bridges between different titles and genres, and develop our own shareworthy social moments to amplify the channels.
Over the course of the year, we developed more memes than we can count. We moved quickly to capitlize on fastmoving cultural moments and episode premieres and worked within the legal confines that come with entertainment content (while still creating fun and social-first content).
What made our approach different? We utilized HBO and Max's own ownable content develop custom memes rather than relying on the trending memes of the moment to communicate our messages. We then incorporated memes as an always-on part of our scoail strategy rather than a flash in the pan, one-off opportunity for quick, fleating success. They became a part of our social media identity.
We saw tremendous growth and success with this new strategic approach and execution on the "Max Pop" social channels. Over the course of the year we achieved:
