Warner Bros. Discovery C.E.O. David Zaslav has certainly taken heat for removing HBO from the name of the Max service after it combined with Discovery+ in May. Rolling Stone recently dubbed the Max relaunch as the 34th worst decision in the history of television. (Worse than Cop Rock? Really?) But what if consumers don’t actually care that much? What if the perception of quality and trust in Max are actually higher than for HBO Max just six months ago?
That’s what the new Puck Official Streaming Service Hierarchy survey found. Our study, conducted by The Quorum and its pollsters, measured how 2,000 consumers feel about each of the services. Part One is here, and Part Two, focusing just on Max, shows the brand equity metrics adhere much closer to HBO Max than to Discovery+, both of which were measured separately in our first study, in January.
The Breakdown
Net Promoter Score: When it comes to the N.P.S.—which is not a Doogie Howser, M.D. actor but rather a metric that asks consumers to rank brands 1-10 based on how likely they will evangelize about them—Max actually held up the best of all the streamers, despite the name change. Max didn’t grow its N.P.S., but the score dropped only from 41 percent to 38 percent, far less than most rivals surveyed. It’s never great when an N.P.S. declines, and the conventional wisdom in branding circles is that an N.P.S. of 50 is considered good for a company or product. But this is a win for Max in the current environment.
