HBO, Gone, But Not Forgotten.

Pere360 Creative celebrating HBO's 20th Anniversary. Circa 1992

By Glenn Pere

Let's discuss. My agency, Pere360, (www.GlennPere.com) for nearly 35 years, was one of 2-3 HBO's top "go to" creative agencies. We likely worked on close to 3,000, yes 3,000, projects for HBO over that timeframe...upto the AT&T merger. Additionally, we likely marketed over 400 Championship fights for the HBO Boxing franchise...the biggest fights in the history of boxing. We launched Sex and the City, Sopranos, Hard Knocks, 24/7, Real Time with Bill Maher, Curb Your Enthusiasm and worked on many brand campaigns...which brings us to "It's not TV. It's HBO."

During my tenure working with HBO, you can say I was quite intimate with the brand on every level. I can make a fairly strong argument that HBO is, perhaps, one of America's top-5 most culturally significant companies over the past half century. Let's see if you agree, not in any specific order;

• Apple
• Tesla
• Sirius
• ESPN
• HBO

My opinion is that each of those brands changed the way you live your lives. Notice 3 of those brands are networks and the other two are brands is how you may access those networks. Back to HBO, it changed the way you watched TV and HBO changed the landscape of the quality of TV...it had to, as HBO was subscription based and not ad based. If the programming wasn't the best of the best there'd be no reason to pay $10.99 a month when you can get broadcast TV for free. Did the programming live up to that new subscription model? It sure did, and then some. Program-after-program, season-after-season, genre-after genre and Emmy win-after-Emmy win HBO delivered on all metrics. Sports, boxing, stand-up comedy, live concerts; the way YOU consumed your entertainment, HBO changed forever. Springsteen, the Stones, Whitney Houston, Timberlake...they weren't doing LIVE concerts on broadcast TV....no, only HBO, as it was the planet's largest and brightest.stage.

Way back, NBC had "Must see TV." for their Thursday night line-up and it was great. But nobody was saying on Thursday afternoons "let's watch NBC tonight." HBO subscribers would say..."Hey, let's just spend tonight in and watch HBO." That's how powerful a brand HBO became in culture. If you didn't watch HBO's Sunday night line-up, which was branded as "Sunday is HBO.", don't bother going into work the next day, as you'd have nothing to talk to anyone else about, especially at the water cooler. We branded HBO, whatever the category was, HBO owned it, plain and simple.

That being said, it is nearly impossible to brand an entertainment company. No one is saying "Let's catch the next Universal movie." or "Can't wait for the next Fox Searchlight movie." or "wow, can't wait to watch WGN later." or "Hey, did you watch WPIX last night?"

We can all agree that HBO was topical, wherever you'd go. When people spoke about cable TV, they were speaking about HBO. HBO defined the category, the same way Google, Kleenex and Xerox did in their perspective categories.

So now HBO is dropped from HBO/Max. The name may not be on the front door anymore but HBO will be spoken about for evermore...it may be gone, but will never be forgotten.