Avis | Global Advertising & Media Campaign Case Study

Using humility and honesty to disrupt a category, drive consideration and reclaim a brand promise - across the globe.

The Challenge

Anyone who’s hired a car knows the issues: the queues, the unexpected ‘extras’ at the desk and worrying about the car you’ll actually be given. For too long the wants and needs of customers have been ignored in favour of sales. As a result, the category is characterised by a lack of trust and brand differentiation. It’s into this environment that Avis wanted to launch a brand campaign showcasing both their new app and plans to improve the customer experience.

The human insight

If you want to differentiate and combat interchangeability you need to identify and upset category norms. So rather than focus on price and, in the premium segment, quality cars, we focussed on the consumer. Critically, we needed to do this in a way that would increase trust. And that meant leveraging a little of what made Avis advertising famous in the first place – humility and honesty.

The Idea

A global campaign that zigs while the competition zags. We developed a comms strategy, ‘Journey to Better’ – a long-term plan that will deliver proof points around the changes Avis are making to ensure the customer becomes centre of its world. And it all starts with the new app. We brought to life its three key benefits in a way that openly accepts the failings of the car hire industry while explaining the app’s inherent solutions, all in an unexpectedly honest and light-hearted way.

The Impact

The campaign was rolled out across our key European markets via print, radio, digital display, OOH and social.

Across these markets, there was strong ad recall and consideration, increased web traffic, and a 7-fold increase in the growth rate of car hire quotes in our target cities.

An uplift in orders from incremental customers created a life time value of millions of Euros for the business and a positive return on the campaign investment.

The number of new customers booking with Avis through the app doubled.