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How Hertz Used a Kept Secret to Sell Rent2Buy in the UK
Hertz 'Secret' is a 2015 UK film campaign created by Amp London that promotes the Hertz Rent2Buy programme by following an ordinary man named Joe who discovers the car-sales service and deliberately keeps it hidden from his friends, directing audiences to the Hertz Rent2Buy website at the close of the film.
Hertz published the campaign in September 2015, targeting United Kingdom consumers who were unfamiliar with Rent2Buy — a service that allowed customers to rent a vehicle before committing to a purchase. The strategic objective was straightforward: convert an audience accustomed to thinking of Hertz purely as a short-term rental brand into one that recognised it as a credible route into car ownership. The single film asset was the campaign's sole media execution, making it a focused, singular creative statement rather than an integrated multi-channel rollout.
The campaign arrived during a period of measured optimism in the UK automotive and leasing sector. According to fleetnews.co.uk, UK car leasing was expected to grow five percent year over year in 2015, signalling genuine consumer appetite for flexible ownership alternatives beyond traditional dealership finance. Rent2Buy sat squarely within that emerging demand, and 'Secret' was designed to introduce it to a broad UK audience with warmth and wit rather than product specification. Per clapboard.com, the film accumulated more than 200,000 views, a meaningful organic reach for a single-asset campaign operating without a documented paid media budget. The Clapboard Score for 'Secret' stands at 60 out of 100, reflecting a campaign that executes its core idea competently within tight constraints but stops short of the creative or strategic ambition needed to register as a defining automotive advertising moment.
Hertz built 'Secret' around a consumer insight that is both simple and commercially precise: people do not share advantages they want to keep for themselves. The campaign's entire narrative logic rests on this behavioural truth, using Joe's protectiveness over his Rent2Buy discovery as a proxy for the genuine value the service delivers. If the protagonist is unwilling to tell his friends, the implicit argument is that the product is worth guarding.
The United Kingdom market in 2015 presented a genuinely receptive environment for this message. According to fleetnews.co.uk, UK car leasing was projected to grow five percent year over year in 2015, with van leasing forecast to outperform that figure. Consumer appetite for alternatives to outright vehicle purchase was expanding, and Hertz's Rent2Buy programme offered a low-commitment entry point — try the car, then decide — that mapped directly onto that shift in preference. The global car-rental market, estimated at approximately US$87.07 billion in 2015 according to autoremarketing.com, provided the broader commercial backdrop against which Hertz was competing not only for rental customers but for a share of the used-vehicle sales conversation.
In the United Kingdom, Hertz faced established competition from Enterprise Rent-A-Car, which had built a significant used-car sales operation of its own, and from Arnold Clark, one of Britain's largest independent dealership groups. Neither competitor had at the time deployed a comparable narrative film approach to promote a rent-to-buy mechanic, which gave Amp London a degree of creative latitude. The decision to use a single film rather than a campaign ecosystem was itself a strategic choice, concentrating the message and minimising production complexity in a category where television and digital video were the dominant persuasion formats.
Simon Haslehurst directed the creative and copywriting for 'Secret' alongside copywriter Matt Cooper, with production handled by Last Village Productions, according to clapboard.com. The craft choice at the heart of the film is restraint: rather than staging the product as aspirational automotive imagery — gleaming metal, open roads, lifestyle shorthand — the team built the entire execution around a recognisable social situation, the deliberate withholding of a good deal.
Haslehurst's approach places Joe, the central character, in a series of everyday interactions where the temptation to reveal his Rent2Buy discovery is present but resisted. The comedic architecture is familiar — situational irony sustained across a short runtime — but the execution serves the product brief precisely. Rent2Buy is not a premium discovery; it is a practical one, and the campaign's visual and tonal register reflects that. There is no cinematic grandeur in 'Secret.' The film operates in the register of a well-observed British social comedy, which is tonally appropriate for a car-buying programme aimed at pragmatic consumers in the United Kingdom.
Last Village Productions delivered a single media asset, and the discipline of that constraint is visible in the final work. The film does not attempt to cover multiple product features or audience segments within its runtime. It identifies one human truth — people protect good discoveries — and builds outward from it to a single call to action directing viewers to the Hertz Rent2Buy website. The result is a piece of advertising that is coherent and purposeful even if it does not reach for the kind of formal innovation that earns industry recognition. No awards for 'Secret' are recorded at Cannes Lions, D&AD, the Clio Awards, or the Effies, per clapboard.com.
Hertz 'Secret' recorded more than 200,000 views at the time of its circulation, according to clapboard.com. For a single-asset film campaign operating in the United Kingdom in 2015 without a documented paid media budget, that figure represents a credible level of audience reach, though no independently verifiable measurement source or dated platform URL accompanies the claim, as noted by clapboard.com.
No published sales data, market-share movement, or brand-equity metrics connected to 'Secret' are publicly available. No verified records of the campaign receiving recognition at Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clio Awards, or the Webby Awards are identified in available sources, per clapboard.com. The absence of these external validation markers is consistent with a campaign that performed a functional promotional role — introducing Rent2Buy to UK audiences — rather than one positioned as a creative showpiece for the automotive advertising category.
Structurally, 'Secret' demonstrates sound effectiveness logic. The narrative premise encodes a word-of-mouth dynamic directly into the film's story, which is a coherent approach to organic sharing. The comedic withholding device gives the audience a reason to engage beyond product information, and the single call to action keeps the conversion pathway clean. These are the hallmarks of a campaign designed to work within modest distribution parameters rather than dominate a media landscape. The Clapboard Score of 60 out of 100 reflects exactly that profile: a well-constructed, purposeful piece of UK automotive advertising that executes its brief without reaching beyond it.
Hertz 'Secret' is a 2015 UK film campaign promoting the Rent2Buy programme. Created by Amp London, it follows a man named Joe who discovers Hertz Rent2Buy and keeps it hidden from friends. The film directs audiences to the Hertz Rent2Buy website and accumulated more than 200,000 views, according to clapboard.com.
Amp London created 'Secret' for Hertz in 2015. Simon Haslehurst served as creative director and copywriter alongside copywriter Matt Cooper. Production was handled by Last Village Productions. These credits are documented by clapboard.com and represent the full publicly available production attribution for the campaign.
Hertz Rent2Buy allows customers to rent a vehicle before deciding to purchase it. 'Secret' promoted the programme in the United Kingdom by using a comedic narrative in which the central character guards the service like a personal advantage, closing with a direct call to action pointing audiences to the Hertz Rent2Buy website.
Hertz 'Secret' achieved more than 200,000 views at the time of its release, according to clapboard.com. No independently verifiable platform measurement or dated URL accompanies this figure. It remains the only publicly available performance metric for the campaign, with no sales or brand-equity data identified in available sources.
No awards for Hertz 'Secret' are recorded at Cannes Lions, D&AD, the Clio Awards, the Effies, The One Show, or the Webby Awards, per clapboard.com. The campaign's Clapboard Score of 60 out of 100 reflects competent execution of its brief without the creative distinction typically associated with major industry recognition.
The United Kingdom market in 2015 showed growing appetite for flexible car-ownership alternatives. According to fleetnews.co.uk, UK car leasing was projected to grow five percent year over year in 2015, making Rent2Buy's try-before-you-buy mechanic a timely proposition. 'Secret' was designed to introduce that offering to UK consumers unfamiliar with Hertz as a vehicle-sales brand.
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