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Lessons from the sea floor… (in 2 mins)

Nature is a battle between chaos and order?  

The lobster has been around for a very long time and in any group of lobster, over the course of the last several hundreds of millions of years, the chaos of a battle for dominance proceeds a period of order. 

On the brain front, lobsters have more of a collection of neurons than a truly defined brain.  That becomes important later. If two male lobsters are battling for dominance, they make themselves look big by lifting their tails up, and in doing so release serotonin into their bodies. Serotonin makes them feel powerful and strong giving them a sense of ‘I can’. 

Eventually, however, one of the lobsters wins and one of the lobsters loses. 

What happens next is truly amazing. Whilst the winner, gets the girl etc. the losing lobster scuttles off and his brain literally starts to liquify. A new version of the brain forms, one with a more recessive set of pathways and where when the tail lifts up, serotonin isn’t released. 

We are not totally dissimilar to the lobster. You’ve heard the expression fake it till you make it. And you probably discounted it but oddly, there’s something to it. You’ve heard people say stand tool, shoulders back and perhaps also, breathe slowly and deeply. All these physical changes have direct biological results, and those results do things like release serotonin. So, faking it can sometimes create the biological change in our systems and as a result we are perceived and act differently.

A bit of a leap but in 1950s America, the car rental market was dominated by Hertz.  Avis desperate to increase market share turned to Ogilvy & Mather, and the Avis is only No.2 in rent a cars ‘So we try harder’ advertising campaign was born.  It changed the market.  The idea tapped into a long felt emotion across America to champion the underdog. Most Americans of the time could relate some story of how their family had once been the underdog. The campaign produced a series of small heart felt but powerful ideas about how trying harder manifested for people who rented a car- like cleaning out the ashtray before the car was rented.

But they were faking it.  

The real genius of the O&M campaign was in understanding the market, there wasn’t really a clear second place provider, lots of brands were competing for what was left behind by. The genius of the campaign was in defining themselves as the second-place provider. Customers started seeing them as ‘the first alternative’ and so the market became a two-horse race between Hertz and Avis. Avis had clearly differentiated themselves from everyone in the second-place category not really from Hertz. 

SO WHAT?

The Avis campaign was amazing so there are quite a few lessons.  Things like embracing an underdog mentality, focusing your attentions on a clear competitor, simplicity of message.

For me though, the Avis team had a goal; they wanted to stand out against a whole raft of Hertz competitors. 

Not to beat Hertz, that just wasn’t an option. 

But they realised they could more easily achieve their aim by appearing to focus on another problem. 

Sometimes the answer to your challenge is to pick another problem to solve.

Sometimes you might need to fake it, to make it.