Al Ries and Jack Trout

Al Ries and Jack Trout were an American marketing duo whose collaboration produced some of the most influential business and marketing books of the late twentieth century. Both came from advertising and marketing backgrounds, and together they reshaped how companies think about brands and the minds of customers.

They are best known for popularizing the concept of positioning, the idea that marketing success depends less on the product itself than on the place a brand occupies in the customer's mind. Their 1981 book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind became a marketing classic and introduced ideas that are now fundamental to branding and advertising.

The pair followed with other widely read works, including Marketing Warfare, which applied military strategy to competition, and The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, a concise distillation of principles that became a staple on business reading lists. Their writing was known for its clarity, memorable rules, and provocative examples.

Al Ries continued to write influential marketing books, often with his daughter Laura Ries, while Jack Trout also built a substantial independent body of work before his death in 2017. Together, their ideas about positioning and the perception of brands have had a lasting impact on the practice of marketing worldwide.