PERSONALITIES

Admen invented Avis Rent-A-Car's "We try harder because we're No. 2" campaign, but Avis President Robert C. Townsend, 43, was their inspiration. Townsend took over Avis 20 months ago from Boston's Frederic C. Dumaine Jr. after the investment house of Lazard Freres bought control. Things have been running on high-octane spirit ever since. Townsend moved headquarters from Boston to New York, sold off unprofitable limousine and sightseeing services, weeded out the worst of Avis' 2,000 locations in 35 countries, and pinned "We Try Harder" buttons on all employees. "I don't want to hear about what's going well," he says. "Only the problems and the complaints." His staff has no pension plan because Townsend feels that "they probably won't live after 55" because of overwork, are paid modest salaries but rewarded by "participation and incentive compensation." Result: Avis has turned its $3,000,000 loss in 1962 into a $1,200,000 profit this year, and its car rentals are at an alltime high.

Los Angeles' Aerojet-General is an odd sort of aerospace company: it is one of the few aerospace concerns that did not begin life as an airframe maker. Its president, William Zisch, 45, is also an unexpected boss for a firm so deeply involved in science. He never got a college degree, has no formal scientific education, began as a secretary to Aerojet Co-Founder Dr. Theodore von Karman. Yet Zisch is regarded by his employees as just right for the job he took over ten months ago. He quickly and shrewdly makes the commercial decisions that scientists shy from, has acquired such a feel for the technical end of the business that he is as comfortable assessing Aerojet's solid-fuel and nuclear missile program as he is scribbling Pitman. He is also bringing the $700 million company into such nonspace sidelines as economic refrigeration in underdeveloped nations, water desalinization and commercial uses for space-born plastics and Fiberglas. Most important to his sensitive scientific employees, he has restored to Aerojet much of the informality and excitement that marked its earlier days.

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