The Bite Behind

"Every poet, in his kind," said Swift, "is bit by him that comes behind." Not only poets get bitten. The Hertz Corp., leading the U.S.'s 4,000-company auto-rental business with record sales of $274 million in 1965, is being at least nibbled by "We're only No. 2" Avis.

Secrecy is a fetish in the auto-rental business, but best estimates are that Chevrolet-sized Avis has upped its revenues by 34% in 1966, compared with Cadillac-sized Hertz's gain of 18% .

Last week Hertz announced that effective Dec. 1, it will switch its domestic advertising account from Norman, Craig & Kummel to Carl Ally Inc. Ally is a four-year-old agency, so small (ten clients, 76 employees) that its annual billings of $11.5 million are hardly larger than those of its new client ($7,000,000-$9,000,000). Board Chairman Carl Ally, 42, along with his two top vice presidents, previously worked for Detroit's Campbell-Ewald, which had the Hertz account from 1934 to 1959. Says Ally of his acquisition: "We needed someone really big to jump in."

Neither Hertz nor Norman, Craig & Kummel gives a reason for the switch except that there has been "a basic disagreement concerning the advertising strategy that should be employed by Hertz in the U.S." Madison Avenue speculation is that Ally will drop the ever familiar "Let Hertz put you in the driver's seat" theme. Some of his cur rent campaigns have clearly been influenced by soft-selling Doyle Dane Bernbach, which developed Avis' underdog* theme. Among Ally clients are Horn & Hardart ("no frills"), Tensor Lamp ("little me") and Volvo ("small but tough"). Ally, however, insists that he is an adherent of no particular school: "I intend to anticipate the next cycle and be a forerunner as Doyle Dane has been most recently."

* An epithet not to be taken too seriously. Avis is now a wholly owned subsidiary of International Telephone & Telegraph Corp. (TIME, Jan. 22, 1965), which gives it more monetary backing than Hertz has ever had.

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