Avis told customers outright it was only #2, and the confession made everything else it said believable

the problem

A distant #2 with 13 years of losses and no real edge

background

the move

Avis's agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, with copywriter Paula Green working under Bill Bernbach and the backing of CEO Robert Townsend, ran ads that opened by naming the problem outright: 'Avis is only No. 2 in rent a cars. So why go with us?' — answered with 'We try harder,' explaining that a distant challenger, unlike a comfortable market leader, had to work harder on the details customers actually felt: shorter lines, newer cars, cleaner ashtrays, fuller tanks.

the payoff

Within a year Avis turned a $3.2 million annual loss into a $1.2 million profit, its first profitable year in thirteen, and its market share climbed over the following years as the gap with Hertz narrowed from roughly 61%-29% in 1962 toward 49%-36% by 1966.

what came after

'We Try Harder' ran for over five decades and is still taught in advertising and marketing courses as the canonical case for turning an admitted competitive weakness into the basis of the pitch instead of a liability to be hidden — honest underdog positioning as a durable strategic framework, not just a clever slogan.

filed under

Own the weakness

references

1. [1]Avis "We Try Harder": The Campaign That Made Being Second an AdvantageMarketing Case Studies (mynameiskalam.com), 2023mynameiskalam.com
2. [2]Avis: 'We're Only No. 2. We Try Harder.'CrazyAds, 2023crazyads.org

was it genius?

same kind of clever

• 1968 · Dick FosburyFosbury jumped over the bar backwards — the rules never said which way to face
• 1761 · John HarrisonThe longitude problem sat inside astronomy for decades until a self-taught carpenter decided it was actually a clock problem
• 1893 · Fridtjof Nansen / Colin ArcherNansen built a ship too round to be crushed by pack ice, then sailed straight into the ice on purpose