WarnerMedia spent 2021 crafting a marketing multiverse around its iconic intellectual property, from extensive “Rick and Morty” tie-ins to deploying its DC superheroes to enact change. 

See all of Ad Age's 2021 Marketers of the Year here.

“It’s been an incredible year in so many ways in terms of challenges, but also in terms of opportunities,” said Ann Sarnoff, chair and CEO of WarnerMedia Studios and Networks Group, who was appointed to the chief role in August 2020. “We really feel like we hit our stride in 2021.”

The company has been firing on all cylinders this year: reinvigorating its temporarily paused film business to net more than $2 billion at the box office to date; throwing weight behind its vast IP library to expand its campaign capabilities with a wide range of brands; and ramping up its presence in the digital video space to have one of the biggest successes of the so-called “streaming wars” to date.

“What you can see is that the entire company has been marshaled around growing HBO Max as a direct-to-consumer brand,” said Jean-Paul “JP” Colaco, WarnerMedia president of advertising sales. 

That DTC growth has the potential to kick into higher gear when cable and streaming giant Discovery completes its $43 billion acquisition of WarnerMedia, expected by mid-2022.

While HBO Max started as a subscriber-supported platform when it debuted in the second quarter of 2020, advertisers were able to start buying commercial time on the service earlier this year.

With its ad-supported ambitions, WarnerMedia opened HBO Max to a wide net of brands and agencies, bucking the trend of exclusive sponsorship deals that had become the cornerstone of many streaming platforms’ launch plans. HBO Max’s ad-supported tier debuted in June with as little as four minutes of advertising per hour.

HBO Max had 69.4 million global subscribers at the end of the third quarter, including at least 12.5 million users who signed on within the past 12 months. “And I think what you’ll see is [HBO Max] will continue to grow,” said Colaco.

This growth has been bolstered by ad deals with brands like Cricket Wireless; aggressive expansion into international markets, including many Latin American nations; and a vast content library that includes HBO hits like “Succession,” new originals like the remake of “Gossip Girl” and blockbuster films like “Dune” and the upcoming “The Matrix Resurrections,” which hit the platform 45 days after premiering in theaters.

Earlier this year, HBO Max was also the exclusive home of the “Friends” reunion special, which had no shortage of fans or brand interest, and is a formula that will likely again come into play on Jan. 1, when the streaming service premieres the highly anticipated “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts” cast reunion.

It’s seemingly a favorite expression of Colaco’s that “IP is the new prime time,” but at WarnerMedia it’s less of a catchphrase than a creed these days. Throughout 2021, the strength of the company’s characters, franchises and titles has been laid bare as brands from fast food to finance tap WarnerMedia’s well of content for their own activations—aided in some cases by its House of Max content studio that was unveiled in August.

There have been ongoing collaborations between its animated Adult Swim hit “Rick and Morty” and Wendy’s since 2019, with the relationship’s latest installment consisting of a full-blown takeover of a Wendy’s restaurant in California—which, naturally, was rebranded as a Morty’s.

The company has used the same strategy for some of its recent films, like last summer’s release of “Space Jam: A New Legacy” starring NBA superstar LeBron James and the Looney Tunes gang. That movie premiered with more than 200 marketing collaborations backing it up, from brands including McDonald’s, Xbox, Nike, GameStop, Crocs and Spalding.

The company has also deployed its IP for the common good. WarnerMedia struck a deal with Ally Financial to lend the star power of its roster of DC Universe superheroes to the financial company’s newest brand campaign that leaned into the tagline, “We’re all better off with an Ally.” Created by Anomaly, the campaign debuted at the DC FanDome virtual event on Oct. 16. But the marketing push didn’t just support Ally; it also backed the Milestone Initiative, which was created as part of DC’s Next Generation program that aims to tackle minority underrepresentation in the comic book industry.

“We really have this passion around creativity and providing spaces for diverse creators,” Andrea Brimmer, Ally's chief marketer, told Ad Age. “So when DC and WarnerMedia approached us with this opportunity, we thought it was a great way to extend our efforts we’ve already had around creating new spaces for people of color.”

“Increasingly, we’re seeing more and more that there are lots of brand and media folks asking about our DE&I efforts,” said Christy Haubegger, executive VP, communications and chief inclusion officer at WarnerMeda. “We’re seeing it in RFPs. This was not true five or 10 years ago.”

But for WarnerMedia, equitable representation and diversity aren’t just goals in its consumer-facing activations, but a priority in-house—part of the reason the company released its own Equity & Inclusion Report in October, which Haubegger describes as giving “a snapshot of the work that’s happening across our organization.”

It offers some encouraging figures, such as WarnerMedia’s closeness to gender parity in its global workforce and the fact that 50% of its new hires last year identified as a race other than white. And while there’s still plenty of work to do, Haubegger said “it’s part of who we are now.”

See all of Ad Age's 2021 Marketers of the Year here.