Case study — HBO Europe

Launching HBO GO across nine markets without making it feel like nine different products.

Intro

HBO GO was a new streaming product entering multiple European markets.

I worked on the digital marketing and social side of the launch, adapting the proposition, content and campaigns to individual markets while keeping the HBO brand consistent.

Role
Digital Marketing Manager
Services
Product launchSocial strategyDigital marketingMulti-market GTMSocial listeningCampaign management
Scale
9 markets$300K budget

Challenge

Nine markets needed the same product to make sense locally without turning HBO into nine unrelated brands.

Approach

Market-specific go-to-market strategies inside one intact HBO proposition. Consistent globally, adapted locally.

Result

30% YoY subscriber growth on a $300K budget, and negative sentiment cut from 42% to under 20%.
The work
The challenge

What is it? Why should I subscribe? And why now?

Launching a streaming service isn’t just about announcing that it exists. People need an answer to all three questions, and across nine markets the answer isn’t exactly identical everywhere.

The approach

One proposition, nine ways in.

I worked on market-specific go-to-market strategies while keeping the larger HBO proposition intact. That meant adapting:

  • messaging
  • social content
  • campaign execution
  • audience insights
  • local market priorities

without turning HBO into nine unrelated brands.

Social listening

Understanding where sentiment was coming from.

I built social listening frameworks to understand how audiences were responding to HBO, which gave us a much clearer picture of which conversations actually needed attention.

42%
to
<20%

Negative sentiment, reduced.
Listening frameworks turned complaint volume into something the team could act on, market by market.
The launch

What needed to be global, what needed to be local.

The interesting part wasn’t simply producing more content. It was figuring out which decisions belonged to the brand and which belonged to the market.

30%
YoY subscriber growth
$300K
Total marketing budget
42% → <20%
Negative sentiment
What I took from it

Global doesn't have to mean identical.

The best multi-market work gives local teams enough room to behave locally without losing the reason people recognize the brand in the first place.