Position or Perish: The Narrative Blueprint

Avis was losing $3.2 million a year; and they'd been unprofitable for thirteen straight. In 1962, they sat at number two in American car rental, well behind Hertz, with no plausible path to catching up. Robert Townsend, the new president, hired Doyle Dane Bernbach and asked them to do something useful with the worst hand in the industry.The campaign DDB produced ran a single line: "Avis is only No. 2 in rent a cars. So we try harder."Within a year, Avis had moved from $3.2 million in losses to $1.2 million in profit. The cars hadn't changed. The locations hadn't changed. The pricing hadn't changed; but the story they told about themselves had, and they let that story do the work.What positioning isPositioning is the answer to a question every customer asks before they decide whether to care about your product: "What is this, and why should it matter to me right now?"Before you have a product, and well before you have an investor, you need to have an answer to that question - and you…