"We Try Harder": The Avis Campaign That Rewrote How Second-Place Brands Compete

Avis, the car rental company, spent its early decades as second to Hertz. In 1963, its agency Doyle Dane Bernbach did something almost no brand had done before — it admitted the position. The slogan: "When you're only No. 2, you try harder."

Avis had lost $3.2 million the year before the campaign. Within a year of "We Try Harder," it earned $1.2 million — its first profit in a decade. Market share between Avis and Hertz went from 61-29 to 49-36 over the run of the campaign. The line ran, in some form, for more than half a century. It is one of the most-cited case studies in modern advertising for a reason: it named the weakness and turned it into the position.

What "We Try Harder" actually did

DDB did not fake underdog. It weaponized it. Every ad admitted Avis was second and used the admission as proof of effort — cleaner cars, shorter counter lines, better service, a whole operating culture organized around the promise the slogan made. The audience believed it because the ads did not lie about the starting point.

That is the part most second-place brands miss when they try to copy the move. "We Try Harder" was not clever copy. It was a positioning strategy the entire operation was built to deliver on. If the counter lines had stayed long and the cars had stayed dirty, the slogan would have collapsed inside a quarter.

What second-place brands should actually do

Brands that trail their competitors have options. But turnaround is not overnight, and it is not a slogan alone. It requires an honest read of where the brand is and a team effort to move it.

Three analyses every challenger brand needs

Similar to a SWOT analysis, a competitor analysis is one performed on each competitor. In addition to SWOT, look at and assess the following. What keywords are competitors ranking for? What does their backlink strategy appear to be? What trending keywords are they leveraging? Look at a top competitor's SERPs to understand why they're trending and why consumers are converting on them.

Also conduct a PEST analysis of the brand and do the same on top competitors. PEST stands for political, economic, social, and technological. It is valuable in considering the outside factors that affect brand profitability.

Political. Are there new regulatory factors or policy changes that could affect the brand? Consumer data and privacy — from GDPR to the California Consumer Privacy Act — is one of the most consequential political shifts of the last decade for brands operating at scale.

Economic. Consider exchange rates if the brand is marketed globally. Consider the direction of the broader economy and how a downturn would land on the brand's customer base.

Social. Weigh demographics, age distribution, lifestyle trends, and cultural attitudes. For brands marketing to millennials and Gen Z, age distribution matters — those two cohorts already represent more than half of consumer spending in most Western markets.

Technological. Assess marketing needs and keep abreast of new developments that may save time and energy in tracking, forecasting, and analyzing data.

An honest internal read

How does the brand actually compare with competitors? Conduct an impartial internal consumer report. Are there features that make the competitor's product more appealing? What social channels does the competition use, and what content formats — text, video, image? How often do they post? Based on comments, what do the competitors' audiences look like? Sign up to receive competitor notices, invitations, and offers to keep tabs on their marketing activities.

How do the brand's prices compare with competitors? What income bracket best represents the customer base, and does pricing align with that?

After gathering the information, get the marketing team around a table. Discuss and determine what the competitor's marketing strategy actually looks like, and what changes and improvements can be made to pull off the kind of turnaround Avis pulled off.

Why "We Try Harder" still works as a case study

The Avis story is not a slogan story. It is an alignment story. The line worked because the operations behind it delivered on the promise. Every underdog brand that has tried to run a "we're the scrappy challenger" campaign without the operating discipline to back it up has watched the campaign expire the moment the first customer notices the counter line is still too long.

The second-place brands that break through do the same three things Avis did in 1963. They name the reality. They align the entire operation behind the promise. And they let the truth of the delivery do the marketing work the ads only start.