David has been travelling around the world and just got back from a wedding in the beautiful Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles before coming to Dallas for the Rag & Bone cocktail party. I was able to catch up with him last night at Neiman Marcus where he was launching his Fall campaign.
BC – Congratulations on all your success and your store in Highland Park Village. I love your new Fall/Winter collection. But, I would love to talk to you about your video marketing campaign since I’m in the PR business. I find your video with award-winner French actress Lea Seydoux very intriguing and inspiring.
DV – It’s pretty sick, right?
BC – Yeah, it’s sick. I love it. I work with 7 for all mankind on a PR level and they’ve collaborated over the years with James Franco in a similar way. I’m curious to hear from you to see if you feel this is the way of the future with advertising?
DV – Yeah, I mean, it’s an interesting point. First of all it’s very exciting to even be advertising. We’ve been doing this for 10 or 11 years and only in the past 4 years, we have actually done print ads in which we did with Kate Moss. To answer your question though, when doing those shoots you want to be able to capture as much content as possible and I think this last time the team did a pretty awesome job. Not just in print but on video too. We shot with an old 8-millimetre camera, which had a really nice feeling to it. The question though becomes what kind of opportunity do you have to sell and get it out there. And, obviously, things can go viral but people have a very short attention span.
DV – I was actually intrigued to see if we could put it in the movie theatre as a commercial before movies.
BC – What a great idea!
DV – Yes, but we didn’t have the budget for it. I even looked into doing it at smaller indie art house theatres but it didn’t work out. Like you said it’s good to actually measure the impact of the video and brand building though.
BC – And then I’m curious about the Hunter + Rag & Bone collaboration. How did that come about?
DV – Hunter is a pretty iconic British brand and Rag & Bone marks us, English guys. The company in a sense is really a function in the fact that we’re English but we love the feel of New York City. So when we entertained collaborations we tend to like to collaborate with people who like to make specialized things that we really can’t make. We’re not really in the business of making rubber boots. And so it felt like a nice fit and in fact its done incredibly well. The customer has loved them and we’ve sold out really quick.
BC – Well, the price point is so good too.
BC – So, what’s next for you? Are you able to take a break and go on vacation soon?
DV – Actually at the end of the month I’m going away. And, then hopefully a little less air travel!
David has been around the world twice in 2 weeks and is already off to San Francisco this morning. He left me with some great insider news though when I asked about collaborating with Hunter again. He said “Yeah…we’re going to do it again. But, no one knows that yet.”
Thanks, David. xoxo
