SUCCESS

Monday, May 08, 2006

I love the story of how Avis moved to the top of the car rental business.

Their competition had five dollars for each dollar they had. They asked: "How do we get five million dollars of advertising for one million dollars?"

Finally, Bill Bernbach heard the question and answered: "If you want five time the impact, give us ninety days to learn enough about yoru business to apply our skills, and then run every ad we write where we tell you to run it. Our people work to see how effective ideas are. But most clients put our ads through a succession of Assistant V.P.'s and V.P.'s of advertising, marketing, and legal until we hardly recognize the remnants. If you promise to run them just as we write them, you'll have every art director and copywriter in my shop moonlighting on your account."

They shook hands on it.

Ninety days later, Bill Bernbach came out to show Avis his recommned ads. He said he was sorry but the only honest things they could say were that the company was second largest and that the people were trying harder.

Avis didn't like the ads but they had agreed to run them.

The rest is history. Their sales growth rate increased from 10 per cent to 35 per cent in the next couple of years.

M O R A L: Don't hire a master to paint you a masterpiece and then assign a roomful of schoolboy-artists to look over his shoulder and suggest improvements.

AMEN AND AMEN!

EVERY ORGANIZATION I KNOW NEEDS TO LEARN THIS TRUTH--ESPECIALLY THE CHURCH.