Portfolio: RISE Up NRF Video | LAI Video

Rise Up Origin Stories

At the beginning of the year, we helped the NRF Foundation launch a brand new training and credentialing program called RISE Up. Through a series of retail success stories, the video campaign was able to talk about the importance of recruiting new professionals without actually highlighting RISE Up graduates… until now.

Casting a New Class

The first class of RISE Up professionals are emerging across the country, completing the Retail Industry Fundamentals course and entering or reentering the workforce with a leg up. Our team went to Baltimore to capture the stories of a small group of “learners” going through and completing the RISE Up curriculum. Dylan and Sarah identified and got to know a few of these faces, like Asia Thomas, a mother of seven looking to begin a new career to support her family. Or David Townes, a former heroin addict looking for a new opportunity and professional redemption.

A New Beginning (and a Happy Ending)

Although our time with these individuals was short, Rob crafted an empowering arc that saw our characters complete the Retail Industry Fundamentals, attend a hiring fair and get interviews or even job offers. The unique color grading alters Jun and De’von’s b-roll footage with the same treatment applied to RISE Up’s other marketing materials. The empowering edit ends with title cards that reveal the participants whereabouts — something that you would find at the end of an uplifting biopic, suggesting that RISE Up allows for that comeback story so many crave. This was part of a series of videos that debuted at the massive annual convention NRF 2018, launching a new iniative to help reframe retail.