Why Avis’s We Try Harder ad worked
Siddharth After this one ad campaign, Avis went from a $3.2 million loss to $1.2 million in profit.
A lot of modern marketing companies just try to follow marketing trends or what seems good. I don’t think a lot of them truly use the psychological principles that this ad campaign did.
When this ad came out, Avis was second in the rental car market, behind Hertz. So they positioned themselves as “trying harder”.
There’s three reasons why it worked:
→ It gets your attention → It sticks with you → You get a positive impression
No one ever admits that they are second, so it gets your attention.
Two months from now, you’re still going to remember it because of this psychological principle called “neurons that fire together, wire together”.
Our brain is filled with neurons that are firing all the time.
Drink coffee → you’re firing neurons Wake up → you’re also firing neurons
If whenever you wake up, you drink coffee, those neurons are gonna fuse together. Not in the literal sense, but they’re gonna start activating at the same time.
Avis fuses themselves indirectly with Hertz. They never say Hertz in the ad.
But because they positioned themselves as second, when you think of Hertz, you’re gonna think “okay, what’s the alternative to Hertz? It’s Avis.”
None of this matters if you don’t actually have a positive response to the company. They did that because:
→ They’re honest, they said they were second → They made it a very relatable experience. Being second, being undervalued, so you have to work harder to push through.
It’s a very human experience. And that’s what every great ad needs.
If you want examples of some really good ads, you can go to benchmark dot social. We have a list of a bunch of iconic ads with a full analysis on them, so you can really understand why they work.
#marketing #advertising #psychology
