Think Small, Try Harder

Think Small

It was 1959.

The US economy was booming, the nation was optimistic and people were driving the massive and flashy cars regularly launched by Detroit.

Each year the newest batch of cars were advertised using beautifully illustrated adverts focused on how they looked and felt.

Meanwhile in post-war Germany the economy was very different and people needed cheap and reliable cars.

And the car they were turning to en masse was the ‘people's car’ - the Volkswagen.

The Beetle was an idea commissioned by Adolf Hilter himself and funded by the Nazi state in the lead up to WW2.

In the aftermath of the war the car was put into production and against all odds, became a significant commercial success.

By 1955 they had sold 1 million.

But very little of that 1 million were sold in the worlds’ largest car market - the USA.

No one there was buying the small, strange looking, old car with a very dubious history.

So in 1959 VW turned to the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach.

The team at Doyle Dane Bernbach had a challenge on their hands and they needed to find a way for their small car and small ad budget to have a big impact.

So they challenged all of the conventions of car advertising.

• They focused on the product, not the feeling

• They focused on how cheap it was to buy and run.

• They used sans serif, chopped up sentences to leave imperfection

• They used photography and they ran it all in black and white

The contrast of the ads grabbed attention.

And the wit and product focus positioned the Beetle as an intelligent alternative. 

Soon a lot of people started to buy this smart underdog.

Sales shot up to an eventual peak of 569,696 vehicles in 1970.

And by the time the ‘Think Small’ ad campaign was finished VW had managed to grab 7% of the U.S. car market.

VW was already a successful business and the Beetle a very successful product, but when they had to break into a new market, they had to think and act like a challenger. 

“I like rules. Without them, we don't know what to break.” - Helmut Krone (Art Director - Doyle Dane Bernbach)

Try Harder

A year after BBD launched the VW campaign, they took on Avis as a new client. 

Avis launched in 1946 as the first rental car company to be located within airports. 

With this new business model, they grew quickly, but in time others duplicated their idea and the growth stopped. 

By 1962 they hadn’t made a profit in 13 years.

Avis was taken over by an investment group and a new CEO, Robert Townsend, was brought in to turn things around.

And he turned to Doyle Dane Bernbach.

This time there was no clear product differentiation to work with - across the rental companies the cars were the same, the prices were the same, and the locations were by then largely the same. It’s the type of market where brand awareness and the size of the companies makes the difference.

In the car rental market the dominant player was Hertz who had established a 61% share of the market.

So how could Avis complete?

Doyle Dane Bernbach realised that to work against a big incumbent the only difference Avis could have was to strive to offer a better experience to their customers. 

They needed to try harder every single time. 

The ‘We Try Harder’ campaign was created.

“It may well be that creativity is the last unfair advantage we're legally allowed to take over our competitors.” - Bill Bernbach 

But needing to try harder, and trying harder are very different things. 

The campaign was also the opportunity to instill a new way of working across the organisation so that the business delivered on its promise. 

As the copywriter of the campaign, Paula Green, said, “we were really creating an operating manual for the company, saying you had to give customers a clean car, windshield wipers had to work, cars had to have a full tank of gas.”

Throughout Avis the people needed to embrace a different mindset. 

So a separate campaign of activity was launched within Avis to bring the team onboard and convince them to act differently.

Both campaigns were a huge and rapid success.

Embracing the challenge created the challenger.

Within three years Avis’ market-share shot up from 29% to 36%, closely challenging Hertz’s reduced 49%.

Avis' sales shot up from $30 million to $75 million.

The campaign ran for the next 50 years, all over the globe.

“It’s not the size of the budget.
It’s the ferocity of the idea” - Paula Green

Challenger Brands

The Beetle and Avis are seen as two of the earliest ‘Challenger Brands’.

Being a Challenger is a marketing strategy and an ethos of a company. 

Adam Morgan, author of Eating the Big Fish describes it as, “A Challenger Brand (and the team behind it) has business ambitions bigger than its conventional resources and is prepared to do something bold, often challenging the existing conventions or codes of the category, to overcome that gap and enjoy significant and sustained growth.”

Challenger Brands are smaller businesses (Think Small) that have to punch above their marketing budget (Try Harder).

And they need what Adam Morgan calls a “challenger mindset” to succeed.

There are challenger brands in all sectors, some are small, some are now very large, but they are always focused on challenging the conventions of the market. 

RedBull offers small, expensive cans of not slightly unpleasant tasting drinks to challenge Coca Cola and the soft drinks market.

Nando’s offers spicy, more healthy cooked chicken, with personality to challenge KFC and fried chicken.

IKEA offers value for money to challenge the assumption that good interior design should be exclusive. 

Tony Chocolonely offers ethically sourced chocolate to challenge the practices in the chocolate supply chain. 

Challengers are not just small brands, they can be large, they can be part of a bigger brand, they can be a team. 

What they all have in common is a challenger mindset, a desire to break free of the established assumptions and deliver a disproportionate impact.

“If you don't do it excellently, don't do it at all. Because if it's not excellent, it won't be profitable or fun, and if you're not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing there?” - Robert Townsend

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Adam Morgan, “Eating the Big Fish”, Adweek Media (2009)