HBO’s formula for experiential marketing

Stephen Whiteside

HBO, the cable network, has successfully used experiential marketing as a means to promote a variety of its shows in truly compelling ways.

“An episode of television is linear; it’s finite,” insists Steven Cardwell, HBO’s Director/Program Marketing & Marketing Strategy.

“But marketing can go in all sorts of different directions, and take a lot of different paths.”

As evidence of that versatility, HBO delivered a brand-activation masterclass at SXSW 2018 with a live recreation of the theme park from “Westworld”, a cowboys-meets-robots drama series that returns to screens for its second season in April.

The cable network’s decision to transform a two-dimensional broadcast experience, even one that attracted 12 million viewers per week across all channels for its debut series, into an in-person...

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