• by Tanya Gazdik , June 4, 2015

The first national campaign for apartment listing site Rent.com features comedian J.B. Smoove.

Smoove’s character, “The Legit-A-Master,” emphasizes the company’s position as the online destination for “legit” rental listings. 

The multimillion-dollar integrated campaign was created by Doner and also includes a new brand logo, an updated website look and feel, and an influx of new listings that more than triples Rent.com’s inventory of apartment listings.

The effort also highlight investments Rent.com has made over the past few years to provide HD photos, 3D floor plans, apartment listings that have been verified by Rent.com and Certified Resident Ratings & Reviews featuring feedback from people that Rent.com has confirmed as actual residents in the building.

Rent.com has made “incredible” investments in proprietary content and unique features in the past few years to make sure that the company provides a different experience for people looking for a new place, says Clark Wood, CMO of RentPath, LLC, Rent.com’s parent company.

To help inform the national advertising campaign and overall rebranding, Rent.com conducted an in-depth study to understand how consumers perceived the online rental industry as a whole, what they were looking for and some of the pain points.

Research revealed that because so many listing sites include the word “apartment” in their names, there was a lot of confusion and misattribution among websites in the marketplace, with no one online rental listing site standing out from the rest and providing anything unique for the renter.

Rent.com’s target audience is the younger Millennial, says Rob Strasberg, co-CEO and chief creative officer, Doner.

“It was crucial that the campaign creative was infused with humor in order to really capture the attention of renters,” he says.

Actor, writer and comedian J.B. Smoove was the perfect person to achieve the goal, he adds. The TV spot follows J.B. throughout his day of checking listings, certifying reviews and gathering the floor plans and photos needed for stellar apartment listings.

The national advertising campaign will span broadcast, digital, social and non-traditional media channels. The national television campaign launches this week on over three dozen broadcast and cable networks including ABC, NBC, USA, TBS, ABC Family, Adult Swim, Comedy Central, Spike, MTV and VH1, among others. It will roll out across key Millennial programming video on demand services and online full-episode players.