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For years, HBO shows like Game of Thrones and Westworld wowed attendees at South by Southwest (SXSW) with splashy activations and experiences ranging from a blood-donation experience to a recreation of a western town. This year, WarnerMedia isn’t highlighting one show at the conference and festival—the company will spotlight all shows and films available on its upstart streamer HBO Max, with a digital experience aimed at serving up ultra-personalized recommendations.
The digital experience, called HBO Max Orbit, will use each user’s facial movements and voice prompts to pull up personalized library recommendations from HBO Max’s library of programming: more than 150,000 scenes clipped from HBO Max series and films, including everything from Game of Thrones to The Big Bang Theory. Physical or verbal cues on desktop web browsers and iOS or Android devices will be able to surface clips from HBO Max programs, and the experience will encourage viewers to delve deeper into the library and find new clips.
HBO Max isn’t just hoping viewers will stumble on the feature by themselves. The company is promoting a challenge for viewers to navigate through the experience to unlock a never-before-released clip from the upcoming monster film Godzilla vs. Kong, which hits theaters—and HBO Max—on March 31. Specific clips will trigger a “challenge mode,” prompting viewers to recreate a certain facial expression or speak a memorable line, and each successful challenge will unlock a few frames of the clip.
The entire experience—created with help from experience design firm Hush— is designed around what WarnerMedia executives have said is the strength of its streaming service, which had 30.8 million total wholesale subscribers by the end of the fourth quarter. (Combined, HBO and HBO Max have 41.5 million subscribers domestically.)
“The pandemic has forced brands from all sectors to reimagine experiential marketing and devise new ways to engage and delight users with content,” Jason Mulderig, HBO Max’s svp of brand marketing, said in a statement. “HBO Max Orbit is an impressive technical feat, and we’re so pleased to use this technology to create fun, meaningful connections with people from the comfort of their homes.”
“This was an incredible creative and technical opportunity for our firm and one that was supported with energy and enthusiasm by the HBO Max team,” Hush partner David Schwarz said in a statement. “Strategically, we were able to lean into the fact that HBO Max’s library is unparalleled in quality and scale. We latched onto an intriguing but simple question: how can we leverage design and creative technology to give audiences a magical experience of navigating the seemingly infinite world of HBO Max? It needed to be functionally intuitive and fast, but also dreamlike, extemporaneous and unexpected.”
While most SXSW attendees will experience the installment virtually, there will be a small in-person component. Several AT&T flagship stores around the country will receive an in-person installation beginning next month. That experience, also designed with Hush, will include a chamber built into the store’s footprint that customers can stand in and experience clips populating around them as their body movements and voice prompts control the experience.
The experience is part of a considerable presence for WarnerMedia at the forthcoming SXSW online festival and conference, which is coming back after being cancelled over a year ago due to the then-nascent Covid-19 pandemic. WarnerMedia has five days of programming planned, including a three-day content showcase called WarnerMedia Rise, which will include panels, sneak-peeks and other programming that will be available even to people who have not registered to attend the conference. Various WarnerMedia shows, executives and talent will also appear across five days of SXSW’s official programming.
