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HBO’s New Viral Video/Ad Strategy: Your Parents Are Annoying A-Holes


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HBO GO wants tech-savvy kids to use its mobile service, and to do that, they’ve partnered with Buzzfeed to create a series of videos in which parents of teenagers constantly ruin the HBO viewing experience by saying or doing stupid things. It’s a funny campaign…and utterly misguided.

Here’s why: to be effective, ads need to target the decision-maker in the household for that product – and I have never once heard of a teen paying the family cable bill. Not to mention that if you have really awkward parents, the odds that they want you watching rapey shows like Game of Thrones someplace where you can’t be monitored seem vaguely slim.

Though with all that said, these parents are pretty damn cool to let their kids watch anal sex on TV. Cut ’em some slack. Besides, they got you HBO in the first place, you ingrate.