While we won’t likely know for a year or so, Avis’ tagline shift from “We Try Harder” to “It’s Your Space” will either go down as the biggest ad flop in history or the crucial change the brand needed to pull itself back to the number two spot (Recently, it slipped to third behing Hertz and Enterprise).
The tagline, “We Try Harder” was created in 1962 by DDB. And it worked, pulling Avis out of a decade-long slump and into a position of profit.
After you view these new ads, created by Leo Burnett under the watchful eye of (relatively) newly installed Avis CMO Jeannine Haas, you will certainly not be as excited as Avis was fifty years ago when “We Try Harder” helped resurrect the brand.
Sadly, the ads (well two out of the three) follow the now standard approach of portraying businessmen (and they are all men in these ads) as buffoons who just can’t wait to get down with their wanna be hipster, fist-bumping bad selves.
If these are what Avis customers are like, we certainly don’t want to be in their space.
