Challenge/Objective
From its origins, RTR was doubted or dismissed by many as a “fun” business idea without any serious substance or business acumen behind it. Their idea was novel at almost every altitude. The RTR team was able to build an engaging, innovative and rapidly growing business in spite of all that. It was critical for their IPO film to not only fully articulate the comprehensive and thoughtful business behind the scenes, but also to validate and demonstrate the value of fashion as a utility worth providing and subscribing to.
Strategic Approach
We worked with Rent the Runway to address these challenges on a few fronts.
First, we opted to interweave customer, designer and media testimonial throughout the piece to substantiate and reinforce much of the key messaging around the value proposition of the service. The power and conviction of these customers from all walks of life was undeniable and put the value proposition front and center constantly throughout the piece.
Second, we used multiple wardrobe changes for our executive interviewees themselves to show the power and impact of the items they made available to their users base.
Third, we worked with RTR to create an entire segment of the film dedicated to deep-diving into their proprietary technology stack and their innovative physical infrastructure powering their operations – things that gave them a big competitive advantage, were entirely conceived of and built in-house, and were largely unknown to the outside world.
Finally, we leaned into engaging storytelling and a little confident playfulness in the scripting and delivery of our interviews, including capturing a partially unscripted and partially scripted founders story between Jennifer and her sister to ground the hypothesis behind the business in a real human element.
Execution
We filmed for 5 days in and around New York, and one day capturing the inside of one of RTR’s fulfillment centers.
We also hired a cinematographer who was fresh off an Oscar win because she herself used Rent The Runway and we wanted to honor and build on the strong female leadership and chemistry the RTR team had.
We captured extensive b-roll of their Closet in the Cloud, which RTR did not have any real collateral for and was able to put to use in a variety of important ways after the IPO.
We leveraged a huge swath of user testimonials via personal submissions recorded at home and emailed to us. This was partially because of COVID and partially because of logistics. It ended up reinforcing the organic and authentic enthusiasm for the company in a nice way that worked well for RTR’s message, even if it had inconsistent production value.
We filmed Jennifer over two days so that we had plenty of time to capture her content naturally, with the production value and camera motion, and of course the wardrobe changes desired.
Results/Outcome
Shares of Rent the Runway opened at $23, up from its IPO price of $21 each. It sold 17 million shares to raise $357 million in its upsized share sale, which was priced at the top end of its initial range of $18 to $21.
Jennifer herself wrote us a deeply enthusiastic note after we delivered the final piece, and we’ve seen our footage show up in their collateral many times since working on this film.
