Avis we try harder campaign

In 1962, Avis was in search of a new advertising campaign. Since its inception, the car rental company had trailed behind the market leader, Hertz. So the ad agency Doyle Dane Bernbach decided to embrace Avis’ second-place status as a sneaky way to tout the brand’s customer service. “When you’re only No. 2, you try harder,” went the new tagline. “Or else.”

We Try Harder

The “We Try Harder” 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. From 1963 to 1966, as Hertz ignored the Avis campaign, the market-share percentage gap between the two brands shrunk from 61–29 to 49–36. Terrified Hertz executives projected that by 1968 Avis might need a new ad campaign—because it would no longer be No. 2.

The rivalry between Avis and Hertz dates back to the mid-1940s, when Air Force officer Warren Avis, as he traveled around the country and overseas, spotted an unexploited niche in the rental car market. Avis’ killer idea: Put the cars inside airports. At the time, most rental lots—including Hertz’s—were located in downtowns. Avis thought he could cater to the growing ranks of business travelers who wished to fly into cities, drive to a series of meetings, and fly out the same day. “Even as we grew by leaps and bounds, the Hertz people vowed up and down that our approach wouldn’t work,” Avis recalled in his 1986 autobiography, Take a Chance to Be First. That eventually changed. “They jumped in and began to copy everything that we had pioneered. I honestly don’t think that Hertz has come up with an original idea yet in the airport car-rental field.”

Acknowledge the competition

Avis’ book is chock full of other truculent jabs at his sworn corporate enemy. Though Avis had sold his namesake firm and exited the rental business 32 years before, his loyalty remained fierce. He accuses Hertz of renting “near-jalopies,” caricatures “the Hertz mentality,” and describes the market-share struggle as “the war with Hertz.” But it was the “We Try Harder” ad campaign, launched well after Mr. Avis had left the scene, that kicked the car rental race into another gear. The never called out Hertz by name, but the accusations were implicit. “Avis can’t afford not to be nice.” “Avis can’t afford to make you wait.” “Avis can’t afford dirty ashtrays.”. The campaign would run for the next 50 years, all over the globe.

Avis takes a risk

Acknowledging any sort of brand weakness used to be anathema to Madison Avenue. Why encourage consumers to wonder why you’re stuck in second place? Better to project unflappable confidence. At the risk of ascribing too much to the dynamics of 1960s gender roles: Perhaps it’s no coincidence that a woman devised the Avis slogan. DDB copywriter Paula Green—a real-life Peggy Olson—came up with the “When you’re only No. 2” construction. It was revolutionary because, as Green said in later interviews, “It went against the notion that you had to brag.” (Green has also acknowledged, in what sounds like a nod to the workplace obstacles she faced, “ ‘We Try Harder’ is somewhat the story of my life.”)

Famed ad man David Ogilvy praised Green’s Avis ads as a feat of “diabolical positioning,” and DDB became known for these judo-style campaigns, in which a foe’s putative strengths are turned against him. When American cars were growing massive and show-offy and comically tail-finned, DDB pitched the Volkswagen Beetle with a now legendary 1961 print ad. “Think Small,” read the copy, with a teensy image of the car floating against an expanse of white space. “It’s ugly but it gets you there,” another VW ad confessed. DDB partner Bill Bernbach had sized up the cultural moment: Americans were weary of earnest, bigger-is-better, 1950s-style consumerism. The audience was receptive to a humble message that tweaked authority.

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