Advertising usually tries to make a brand look like the leader. In 1962, Avis ran ads admitting it wasn’t.
The rivalry
Avis had been chasing Hertz since the mid-1940s, when Warren Avis, an Air Force officer, started renting cars at airports while most rental lots, including Hertz’s, sat downtown. Airport rentals grew into an industry, but Hertz remained the giant. By the early 1960s Avis was a distant second, and it was losing money.
The company’s new CEO, Robert Townsend, went looking for a new advertising campaign.
The idea
The agency was Doyle Dane Bernbach, the firm behind Volkswagen’s “Think Small.” DDB partner Bill Bernbach sensed that Americans were growing weary of earnest, bigger-is-better, 1950s-style consumerism. There was an opening for a brand that sounded honest.
So DDB decided to embrace Avis’s second place as a way to sell its customer service. Copywriter Paula Green came up with the argument. As Slate recounts it, the pitch went: “When you’re only No. 2, you try harder. Or else.”
The ads explained, in plain and slightly self-deprecating copy, that because Avis wasn’t the biggest, it couldn’t afford dirty ashtrays, half-empty gas tanks or long lines. It had to be better, simply to survive. The motto was shortened to three words: “We try harder.”
The results
The ads were an instant hit. Within a year, Avis went from losing $3.2 million to earning $1.2 million, the first time it had been profitable in more than a decade.
The market moved too. From 1963 to 1966, while Hertz largely ignored the campaign, the gap in market share between the two companies narrowed from 61–29 to 49–36. Hertz executives reportedly worried that by 1968 Avis might need a new slogan, because it would no longer be No. 2.
Why it worked
- It was believable. Everyone already knew Hertz was bigger. Admitting it made everything else Avis said more credible.
- It gave a reason to choose. “We try harder” turned a weakness into a promise of better service.
- It made the leader the villain. By casting itself as the scrappy underdog, Avis made choosing the big company seem lazy.
- It committed the company. A promise to try harder had to be kept at the rental counter, which pushed Avis to improve its service.
Legacy
“We try harder” became one of the longest-lived corporate mottos in American business and a textbook case of “challenger brand” positioning. Paula Green, who later founded her own agency and wrote the “Look for the Union Label” jingle, became known as one of the pioneering women of the advertising industry. Few campaigns have shown so clearly that honesty about your position can be more persuasive than claiming to be the best.