Avis admitted being #2 and turned losses into profit

By 1962 Hertz held roughly 61% of the US car-rental market against Avis's 29%, and Avis had lost money every single year for thirteen years straight. The two companies offered essentially the same cars at the same airports for similar rates, so Avis had no honest product advantage to point to — the standard advertising move of claiming to be the best, fastest or friendliest would have been indistinguishable from what every other also-ran said, and a market that already knew who was #1 had no reason to believe it.

Spending scarce ad budget on an unbelievable superiority claim risked being ignored outright, especially against a leader with roughly five times Avis's advertising spend. The company needed a message that would actually get noticed and believed by a market conditioned to tune out rental-car superlatives, without the budget to simply out-shout Hertz.

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.

Admitted being #2 outright, making the ad credible, so 'we try harder' was trusted and turned losses into profit.

Admitting a verifiable weakness short-circuits skepticism because it's clearly not self-serving.

The confession's credibility transfers to the follow-up claim, making 'we try harder' believable.

The claim logically follows from the admission, creating an internally consistent argument.

Customers acted on the specific felt benefits, driving real behavior change and profit.

When you can't claim superiority credibly, admit a real weakness and link it to a compensating strength.

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. '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.