Sidney Sheldon many a times cited as amongst the top 10 fiction writers of all times, started writing poems as a child and then as he grew up he started reviewing scripts and writing comedies which helped him win an Oscar in 1948 aged just 31. However his major success and fame is attributed to his romantic suspense thrillers which he began writing after the age of 5O. All his 18 thrillers were best sellers making a staggering sales of more than 300 million copies in 51 languages across the globe.
I was introduced to Sidney Sheldon capers by a friend after I had read almost the entire Hardy Boys series during my Class X vacations post my exams, and as has been the case with readers worldwide I too got hooked to the writing of Sidney Sheldon. He was able to capture the reader’s attention and his detailed and vivid description of his characters, the story and the cities where the story progressed was not only interesting but also very informative. Be it Boston or Kansas or Barcelona or the French Riviera or the mines of Africa, Sidney Sheldon wrote as if he had seen it all.
A few years ago, while engrossed in a Sidney Sheldon thriller, the protagonist hires a taxi from the airport on which is displayed the message “ We are no.2. We try harder “. I continued reading and the plot unfolded , but the Try Harder caption did not leave my mind. It was indeed a marketing initiative with a difference and said a lot about the car rental Company which had come out with this Ad. Today’s post therefore is not about the great novelist , but has been motivated by this marketing caption having a strong underlying message, which I accidentally bumped into while reading him.
I was not sure at that time if this piece of marketing, which had just a one line miniscule reference in Sidney Sheldon’s novel was factual or not, but I loved it and had penned down my own assessment. Two points were amply clear from the “We are no.2. We try harder” phrase.
1. The first part “ We are no. 2 “, spoke about a candid confession that the company was no.2 and there was some one better than them. It was a reflection of a company which was honest, truthful and transparent to its customers, a set of virtues which was bound to win appreciation from the public.
2. The second part which says “ We try Harder “, displayed a sincere, hardworking, ambitious and a professional culture in the company, which was highly reassuring to the customer and would have raised optimism about the company in their minds eventually leading to a spurt in sales.
I often spoke about this marketing initiative to my team to motivate them and get then going.
After several years I came across the facts. The marketing campaign was factual and was the brainchild of Avis Car Rental Company in the 60s. They were no. 2 to the mighty Hertz. The campaign was so effective that a loss making Avis, for almost a decade, turned profitable, earning $1.2 million. The campaign got tremendous support from the public and sales virtually sky rocketed. A bleeding company was resurrected.
Avis and Hertz continued to spar for decades, but the ‘ We Try Harder “ campaign has made its place in marketing History as one of those simple but deeply thought of campaigns, which turned a company around.
At the end of the day, being honest, transparent and hardworking pays and that too… always !!!