The Avis 'We Try Harder' campaign is a classic case of a challenger brand repositioning the market leader. Here we look at the advertising, and the lessons to be learnt from this case.

In 1962 Hertz was the clear leader in the car rental business, with Avis as one of the brands in the following pack. The Avis 'We try harder' campaign repositioned Hertz: creating a relative, believable and compelling strength for Avis. The market dominance of Hertz became a weakness and Avis became the 'right choice' in the mind of consumers.

The results were dramatic. In 1962, just before the first 'We try harder' ads launched, Avis was an unprofitable company with 11 percent of the car rental business in the USA. Within a year of launching the campaign Avis was making a profit, and by 1966 Avis had tripled its market share to 35 percent.

But this case is not just about the power of advertising. It is also an interesting example of how an advertising agency worked effectively with a client to build the brand. There were three steps that the agency took that made the Avis brand far more successful than it might have been.

The agency was DDB and it was Bill Bernbach who recommended to Avis management that they overhaul their customer service and upgrade their product before drafting a single ad. His reasoning: "It's always a mistake to make good advertising for a bad product."

In preparing the advertising the agency spent 90 days learning the Avis business and spent many hours in meetings talking to employees about the company. This determination to understand the Avis business led them to a simple question: "why does anyone ever rent a car from you?" The reply helped to make marketing history: "We try harder because we have to."

Finally, in order to involve employees and get their support for the Avis brand promise, each employee received a copy of new Avis ads in his or her pay envelope before each campaign was launched.

Together these three steps helped to ensure that Avis were creating a distinctive and motivating brand experience, through all aspects of their brand.

Hence we have to ensure we are doing enough in all aspects of our brand offer, to distinguish ourselves from our number one competitor. We have to reposition the competitor and create a relative, believable and compelling strength for ourselves.