How HBO Promotes Emmy-Award Winning Show “Hard Knocks”

Purpose of This Research

To identify the content and marketing strategy that contributed to the successful rollout of HBO’s “Hard Knocks”:

• ‍‍‍Assessing the launch timeline for the show
• Identifying key players in the distribution of content
• Highlighting factors that helped create a successful campaign

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The Hard Facts

• ‍The Production Break Window is Closing. Since 2021, 66% of the year is production time for Hard Knocks with only mid-January to July representing off-streaming periods. ‍
• ‍Use Visual-Forward Networks for Streaming Promotion. Ad channels are seeing a shift away from the traditional Instagram, Facebook or Paid Search ad channels. Display saw an overall +416% YoY spend increase while YouTube was introduced in 2022 with a $490K investment.  
• After no investment in 2021, Hard Knocks saw a $180K spend on Twitter in 2022. Why spend on a platform most marketers are running from (1)? In 2020, Republicans represented 52% of fans in the football league. In 2022, Musk reinstated Trump on Twitter. While US Twitter users are predominantly Democrats (2), HBO can now reach both parties on one platform. 

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Key Takeaways

The Pre-Season period lasts the longest. Gearing up for “Hard Knocks” typically goes from January to July. 

• Actionable Recommendations
  Sports fans like instant gratification— use throwback content on YouTube and Facebook instead of launching months ahead.

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Increase ad frequency for prospects. HBO prioritized Display ads on the general and broad site yahoo.com into 2022.

• Actionable Recommendations
  Prioritize more eyes on the brand over targeted audiences when off-streaming periods closely align with real time sport events.

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On Air social content gives viewers the perspective to look into NFL training camps as we observe animals in “Our Planet”.  

• Actionable Recommendations
  Experiment by taking an observational perspective to social videos, capture your athletes with a watchful, Attenborough-style.

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HBO gives football fans exclusivity on Facebook & Instagram by sharing unique content about training grounds & athlete life.

• Actionable Recommendations
  Promote upcoming and streaming content by putting a mic on your F1, aerial or other athletes to give fans inside perspectives.

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HBO’s On Air YouTube ads are emotional. They aim to take viewers directly into the locker room and feel the experience.

• Actionable Recommendations
  Target an audience that already likes football with your On Air content. Keep the content niche but fast paced for super fans.

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Find natural synergy. The 2021 “In-Season” team was announced through “Thursday Night Football”, a regularly streamed event.

• Actionable Recommendations
  Use popular sporting events and championships to make streaming announcements, follow it up online with raw teasers.

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HBO prioritizes YouTube, Twitter and Instagram for Post-Season ads to go where fan conversation is, in a visual way.

• Actionable Recommendations
  Fans who follow their favourite athletes online will be receptive to sport content ads. Use YouTube to build excitement with trailers.

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“Hard Knocks” is an HBO original TV show that gives viewers insight into their favourite football teams.

1. Originally starting in 2001, the show has seen over 17 seasons. Taking place during the off-season for the NFL, the show follows one of the NFL’s 32 teams per training season.
2. In 2021, HBO launched “Hard Knocks In Season”, which follows a team through their games and airs real time during football season in November.
3. Teams qualify (3) to feature if:

• The head coach has been with the team for more than 1 year 
• If the team has not made the playoffs in the previous 2 seasons
• The team has not been featured on Hard Knocks in the past 10 years

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“Hard Knocks” has three main segments to their production and release schedule: Pre-Season, On Air and Post-Season. 

The NFL Season overlaps with at least one month of each segment in the release schedule.

Timeline is a visual representation and is not to scale.

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Pre-Season is the largest block in the timeline with the least amount of content. “Hard Knocks” prepares for the season with throwback content and upcoming release information.

Timeline is a visual representation and is not to scale.

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On Air content features the core “Hard Knocks” season from August to September with 4-5 episodes. It launches during the NFL pre-season and showcases teams during their training camps.

Timeline is a visual representation and is not to scale.

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Post-Season content features a direct plunge into the 2021-introduced “Hard Knocks In Season” that follows a different team through the actual NFL season with 9 episodes.    

Timeline is a visual representation and is not to scale.

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HBO’s “Hard Knocks” website saw 280K unique website visitors from March 2021 to February 2023. 

This does not correspond to the number of individuals streaming the show, but rather those who visit the website's main page to gather additional information.

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Average visitors boosted to 74K in August to September while “Hard Knocks” is On Air. 

This does not correspond to the number of individuals streaming the show, but rather those who visit the website's main page to gather additional information.

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Hard Knocks is a collaboration between HBO Max and the NFL, with supplementary advertising support from the featured team. Which trickles down into… 

Total Followers includes the aggregated number of followers each respective entity has on all social media networks they are present on.

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…all NFL distribution partners or sports-focused media entities looking for additional videos featuring football content.

Total Followers includes the aggregated number of followers each respective entity has on all social media networks they are present on.

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HBO spends an average of $232K on ads during Pre-Season with an 84% budget allocation to Display…

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…While the On Air season budget reduced to an average spend of $178K with a 66% focus on YouTube.

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In Post-Season, budget increased to an average spend of $368K. 

Priority was placed on YouTube and Twitter with an introduction of Instagram to the budget. 

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Pre-Season YoY budget for Hard Knocks increased by +698%.

Driven by introducing Display to the spend and reducing Paid Search by -50% in 2022. 

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On Air YoY budget for Hard Knocks increased by +391%.

In 2022, HBO introduced YouTube to the budget with a $234K investment, taking up 79% of the budget.

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Post-Season YoY budget for Hard Knocks increased by +75%.

HBO introduced YouTube ($256K) and Twitter ($180K) to the budget in 2022.

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Pre-Season saw the fewest posts at 46 average video uploads. 

Facebook, YouTube and Instagram see the highest focus at 82% of the videos shared.

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The On Air season sees the highest average uploads at 207. 

80% of the uploads were pushed on Facebook and Instagram.

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Post-Season sees 105 average videos as “Hard Knocks In Season” airs.

78% of the social posts came from Facebook and Instagram.

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Pre-Season saw +30% more Hard Knocks posts YoY in 2022.

YouTube saw the largest growth with a +183% increase in organic posts from 2021 to 2022.

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The On Air season saw -47% videos shared into 2022.

Facebook and Twitter saw the largest decreases in the On Air season of -58% and -50% YoY.

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Post-season saw -31% videos shared into 2022.

Twitter is the only platform that saw an increase in videos during this period at +9%.

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The 2022 Pre-Season saw a +698% YoY increase in digital spend.

HBO did not start running Pre-Season ads until March in 2021.

The 2023 Pre-Season period is not included in this section as it is not complete by the time of this report.

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The spend increase in 2022 was due to a $382K banner display ad that represents 92% of that period’s budget.

Display Ad

The ad promotes the “In Season” show as it wraps up in January.

• Since the “In Season” show is in line with the regular NFL season, promotion and rollout times merge as the show wraps up in real-time.
• ‍Banner ads make use of the respective team’s colors, as a way to indicate who they are partnering with for the season. Team imagery is located on the left, with programming and CTA information on the right.
• HBO takes a generalized targeting approach, with 98% of their display budget in January 2022 going to yahoo.com followed by Amazon.

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Organic content posted by HBO and NFL for Hard Knocks generated 9.3M views in Pre-Season 2021.

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Organic Content

Pre-Season content features both promotional and throwback videos.

• On July 2, 2021, one month before the Hard Knocks season started, 10 posts were made on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram & Twitter across 6 accounts to announce the launch generating 656K views. 
• A simple, clean promotional asset was used in conjunction with a throwback video of the last time The Dallas Cowboys were on the show. 
• ‍Throwback content is successful for Hard Knocks; two weeks before the season started, an old clip of a comedian visiting an NFL team was cross-posted by the NFL, generating 4M views.

Views 132K

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Views 1.1M

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Organic content posted by HBO and NFL for Hard Knocks generated 3.4M views in pre-season 2022.

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Organic Content

‍Ahead of the release, the NFL posted a fake trailer broadcast on Twitter.

• In March 2022, five months ahead of launch, the NFL launched The Detroit Lions as the upcoming team for the season. 
• The NFL announced the launch with a video they posted on Twitter of a live broadcast from Good Morning Football. It featured a fake trailer with a comedic tone to help bring excitement around the season but to also remind viewers that HBO is producing it. In a voiceover, the fake trailer says “from the network that brought you John Snow and Connor Roy” referencing HBO’s major hit shows Game of Thrones and Succession. 
• Hard Knocks and its partners released the actual trailer on August 2, 2022 a week before the season launch. On the same day, they launched an early clip of a player arriving at training camp.

Total Views: 21K

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The 2022 On Air period saw a +391% increase in digital ad spend.

This is due to a $216K YouTube ad spend on this trailer that represents 73% of the On Air budget.

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YouTube Ad

The $216K YouTube ad features a dramatic trailer for The Detroit Lions.

• The ad plays to the on-brand serious tone that football fans allocate to the game and their teams. 
• ‍Dramatic music plays in the background while the coach speaks over, discussing how hard the team has been working and what they’re bringing to the field in their training camp that Hard Knocks will follow.
• The video is 30 seconds long with a 1-second HBO title cover displaying before jumping into the ad. A “Hard Knocks: Detroit Lions” now streaming watermark rests at the bottom of the ad for its entirety until the end when an HBO Max title screen takes over with subscription prices.

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2021 and 2022 On Air periods saw high organic video views at 16M and 15M respectively.

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On Air 2021 Video Content

On Aug. 28, 2021, 14 posts were made on 3 channels across 5 accounts. 

• Four posts featured a player’s son yelling motivations cues from the bleachers, which generated 1.4M views across channels. 
• ‍The video posted on Facebook generated the top views for the cross-post. It is 35-seconds long, cutting straight into the clip from the show with a 5-second outro featuring the “Hard Knocks” and HBO logos.  
• 409K views were generated by four posts featuring a one shot drone tour of The Dallas Cowboys’ training facility, “The Star”. The video was filmed intentionally to bring a sense of awe into not only the scale but the versatility of the space. 

Views 1.3M

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Views 196K

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On Air 2022 Video Content 

On launch day, Aug. 9, 2022, a series of observation posts were made.

• Posts made on launch day remind viewers that it can be easy to forget that at its core, Hard Knocks is a behavioural analysis show. 
• Organic posts made on launch day use a mixture of observation and raw audio footage to build both comedy and awe toward teammates and coaches.  
• It follows players through tough moments, ups and downs and discusses the ways that they train and improve as a team. In this video, they observe the coach, as seen in nature documentaries, with a voice-over discussing how he is partaking in the warm-ups instead of walking around.

Views 275K

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Views 156K

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Views 46K

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The 2022 post-season period saw a +76% increase in digital ad spend.

This came from a $228K investment in this YouTube ad.

Top ad for 2021 is a Story Post, creative is not currently available.

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YouTube Ad

The ad features the trailer for the new “In Season” Arizona team focus.

• ‍Emotional impact is a driver of the creative vision behind the “Arizona Cardinal’s In Season” trailer.  
• ‍The ad is 15 seconds long. Instead of a separate title slide for HBO, they overlay it for 1 second on top of the ad content with a blur before focusing on the football content. 
• The ad surveys team members’ emotions from the serious tone of play to happiness and intense pre-game pep talks. At one point in the locker room, a teammate stands up and yells, “I’m tired of losing”. 
• The trailer also demonstrates the range of the content from off-field to on-field exclusive moments with players.

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2021 and 2022 On Air periods saw high organic video views at 6.1M and 6.3M respectively.

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Post-Season 2021 & 2022 Video Content

‍Top organic content features exclusive content for football fans.

• In 2021, Hard Knocks launched their new segment “In Season” with the Colts, dropping a trailer on 4 platforms with 10 cross-posts. The trailer celebrates the ingenuity of the brand new format taking place in real time of a NFL season. 
• The Colts’ announcement for “In Season” also happened live (4) during a Thursday Night Football game.
• ‍2022 top-performing “In Season” posts saw exclusive clips from episodes such as player Jameis Winston sharing insight into how he grew up and where he’s come from to on field mic’d up moments between two notorious quarterbacks, Watt and Brady. 

Season Trailer

Views 30K

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Behind the Players

Views 1.1M

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Mic’d Up

Views 2M

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Digital Advertising Data Source Caveat

References:

1. Twitter's ad revenue drops 89% since Elon Musk's takeover

2. Differences in How Democrats and Republicans Behave on Twitter

3. NFL having trouble finding 'Hard Knocks' team for 2023: One franchise already turned down invite, per report

4. Colts to be first team featured on in-season edition of HBO's 'Hard Knocks'