HBO Pissed Off GoT And LotR Fans With New Anticlimactic MAX Promo
The entire HBO Max and Discovery+ saga has been dragging out for too long, but the big dogs just can't seem to stop embarrassing themselves: a couple of days ago, they launched a new MAX promo and managed to piss off literally everyone.
The official HBO Max account posted it on Twitter. In the 10-second-long promo, you can only see Daenerys' face filling with fury before her ultimate breakdown and the dragon starting its flight toward King's Landing.
That's it, that's the promo.
But MAX's marketing genius only needed these 10 seconds to get on the wrong side of all Game of Thrones fans, some Lord of the Rings fans, and the entire HBO Max audience — all in one go!
That's quite an achievement, don't you think? So take notes: we'll follow HBO's steps to learn how to mess it up for everyone.
How to trigger GoT fans
HBO chose one of the most hated moments from the most hated season of Game of Thrones for their promo.
Instead of picking something fans largely loved to remind them of the show's greatness, HBO just brought up its largest failure again for no reason.
Most folks are still infuriated when it comes to season 8, and Dany's fans hated it in particular.
Using the last season's most controversial and despised scene was one pretty interesting decision…
Especially when you're trying to convince fans that you're doing a good thing with this largely-hated rebranding.
The most polite reaction to it was "lmao not the worst GOT season episode being shown in a promotional video."
How to trigger LotR fans
With Daenerys' angry face in the background, there's text appearing in the front.
It reads: "The one to watch when you want to rule them all". Once again, there's a scene from GoT playing at the same time.
With such a blatant reference to Lord of the Rings, it would've made a tiny bit more sense to include a scene from, well, LotR itself, don't you think?
The original movies are streamed on HBO, so it wouldn't have been an issue whatsoever.
But now, HBO's got some pretty upset Tolkien fans down in its comment section claiming that "HBO and Game of Thrones are great but they should know their place."
How to trigger your entire audience
First of all, Game of Thrones has already been streaming on HBO for the past 12 years. It's literally an HBO show, you know.
This announcement is pointless at its core as there's no premiere and the show's been there for a dozen years by now.
Second of all, the announcement only highlighted just how questionable the rebranding itself is once more.
Half of the comments have people asking something along the lines of "Are you guys going to rebrand every 2-3 years to extort more money from your customers in innovative ways?"
Thank you all for coming to our TED Talk today. We hope you all learned how to create promotional videos to have as many people as possible upset with you.
Source: HBO Max on Twitter