Many years ago while studying marketing I read a case study on the car rental company Avis that left an impression on me.
At the time Avis revelled in its ‘challenger’ status, using the slogan "We try harder" to deliberately position as the world's number two car rental company (behind Hertz, far and away the leader).
Advertising effectiveness for smaller brands
I thought the Avis "We try harder" tagline clever and effective. The car rental company's employees got behind this great tagline — they raised their game to really try and beat Hertz. I'm sure Avis' customers appreciated the extra commitment, too.
But it’s tough for a smaller brand in the shadow of a large incumbent that dominates a category. When it comes to advertising effectiveness the numbers are stacked against you. In Mark Ritson’s study and lecture to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Effies (advertising effectiveness awards) he summarised the ten factors that play into advertising effectiveness. And right at the top of the list was ‘existing size of brand’.
“Unless you’re prepared to bulk up, unless you’re prepared to scratch your way up the league table, you’ll never get there.”
Mark Ritson, brand consultant
If you are a smaller brand with, say, less than 10% of market share, then you have to spend relatively more on advertising just to retain your modest market share. Big brands with big market share will pay relatively less to maintain their larger share. Harsh.
Don't worry, we have brilliant creative
Marketers for challenger brands might think they can outflank the category leader brand through brilliant creative work. Nope. Marketers like to think we are in a ‘creative industry’ but, when it comes to the factors driving advertising profitability, ‘creative’ is a poor second to ‘brand size/market share’. According to Ritson, the ‘size/share’ factor is over 50% more important to ads effectiveness than the creative.
Smaller brands simply have to work harder to stand still in the pecking order. A big brand’s money goes further because of its larger, pre-existing market share.
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