Alfred Paul Ries (November 14, 1926 – October 7, 2022) was an American marketing professional and author. He was the cofounder and chairman of the Atlanta-based

consulting firm A consulting firm or simply consultancy is a professional service firm that provides expertise and specialised labour for a fee, through the use of consultants. Consulting firms may have one employee or thousands; they may consult in a broad range ...

Ries & Ries with his partner and daughter,

Laura Ries Laura Ries is a co-founder, with her father Al Ries, of ''Ries & Ries'', an advertising/marketing strategy consultancy firm. She has also written several books in the field of Marketing. Career Laura Ries is an advertising and branding consulta ...

. Along with

Jack Trout John Francis "Jack" Trout (January 31, 1935 – June 4, 2017) was an American advertising executive and an owner of Trout & Partners, a consulting firm. He was one of the founders and pioneers of positioning theory and also marketing warfare th ...

, Ries is credited with resurrecting the idea of " positioning" in the field of marketing.

Life and career

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1926, Ries graduated from

DePauw University DePauw University is a private liberal arts university in Greencastle, Indiana. It has an enrollment of 1,972 students. The school has a Methodist heritage and was originally known as Indiana Asbury University. DePauw is a member of both the G ...

as a mathematics major in 1950.Encyclopedia.com
/ref> He accepted a position with the advertising department of

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...

before founding his own advertising agency in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, Ries Cappiello Colwell, in 1961.

joined the agency in 1967. Ries and Trout wrote a three-part series of articles for ''

Advertising Age ''Ad Age'' (known as ''Advertising Age'' until 2017) is a global media brand that publishes news, analysis, and data on marketing and media. Its namesake magazine was started as a broadsheet newspaper in Chicago in 1930. ''Ad Age'' appears in mul ...

'' in 1972. The themes discussed in that series of articles inspired their later book, ''Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind'', published in 1981. Ries wrote an article for AdWeek that centered around the historical failure of converged devices, ''Why the iPhone will fail'', published in 2007. The

American Marketing Association The American Marketing Association (AMA) is a professional association for marketing professionals with 30,000 members as of 2012. It has 76 professional chapters and 250 collegiate chapters across the United States. The AMA was formed in from th ...

, NY Chapter announced Ries as one of the 2016 inductees to the Marketing Hall of Fame. Ries died in

Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

on October 7, 2022, at the age of 95.

Books

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References

External links

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IMNO Open Source Mentoring Interview with Al Ries

1926 births 2022 deaths Marketing theorists Marketing people American marketing people Advertising theorists Branding theorists DePauw University alumni Businesspeople from Indianapolis Writers from Indianapolis {{marketing-stub