The single biggest lesson from Al Ries is that marketing success comes from owning a position in the mind of the customer, not from having the best product. Businesses win by being first, being different, and being clear about what they stand for, rather than trying to be better than everyone else at everything.
Al Ries (1926-2022) was an American advertising executive, strategist and author who, together with Jack Trout, introduced the concept of positioning to the business world in a series of Advertising Age articles in 1972. This work became the bestselling book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind in 1981. Over five decades Ries advised many well known companies, wrote or co-wrote more than a dozen influential business books, and later worked closely with his daughter Laura Ries. His ideas changed how entrepreneurs and marketers think about differentiation, focus and competitive strategy, and his work remains essential reading for anyone trying to build a brand in a crowded market.
Positioning Is About the Mind, Not the Product
Ries and Trout built their entire framework on a simple but radical idea: marketing is not a contest fought in factories or laboratories, it is fought inside the customer’s head. In Positioning, they used the example of aviation firsts to illustrate the point. Most people can name the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic, but very few can name the second, even though the second pilot may have flown a better route or a faster plane. Ries argued that brands behave the same way. The first company to occupy a category in the customer’s mind holds an advantage that is very difficult for a technically superior competitor to overturn.
How to apply this to your business: Identify what your business can credibly be first at, whether that is a niche, a feature, a location or a customer group, rather than trying to out-perform an established leader on their own turf. Being first in a narrow space beats being second in a big one.
The Line Extension Trap
One of Ries’s most repeated warnings concerned line extension, the practice of stretching a successful brand name onto new products. In his books he pointed to A1 Steak Sauce, a name so firmly linked to steak in the customer’s mind that when the company launched A1 Poultry Sauce, the product failed to gain traction, because the brand name itself worked against the new use. Ries argued that a name which means one specific thing is valuable precisely because of that narrowness, and stretching it in search of short term sales growth quietly erodes the clarity that made the brand successful in the first place.
How to apply this to your business: Before adding a new product under an existing brand name, ask whether the new offer fits what customers already believe the name stands for. If it does not fit, consider a new name rather than diluting a brand that already owns a clear position.
Create a New Category Rather Than Compete Within an Old One
Ries consistently argued that it is far easier to become the leader of a new category than to dislodge an established leader from an old one. Rather than telling a business to be better than the market leader, he encouraged businesses to change the question entirely by defining a new space where no leader yet exists. This thinking underpins many of the strongest brand stories of the last few decades, where companies grew quickly not by beating an incumbent at its own game but by inventing a category the incumbent did not compete in at all, then becoming the natural first name associated with it.
How to apply this to your business: Rather than asking how to beat the market leader, ask whether a narrower or different category exists that you could define and own. Name that category clearly in your marketing so customers understand exactly what makes it distinct.
Focus Beats Trying to Be Everything to Everyone
In his 1996 book Focus, Ries examined how large, diversified companies lost ground to smaller, more focused rivals. He pointed to Sears, once America’s largest retailer, which expanded into insurance, real estate and financial services under one roof, only to be overtaken in retail by more focused competitors who concentrated on doing one thing extremely well. Ries argued that diversification often feels like growth in the short term but quietly weakens the core business, because management attention, brand meaning and operational excellence all become spread more thinly across unrelated activities.
How to apply this to your business: Regularly review whether new ventures or product lines are strengthening or diluting your core offer. Growth that pulls attention away from the thing you do best is often more costly than it first appears.
PR Builds a Brand Before Advertising Can Maintain It
In The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, written with Laura Ries in 2002, Ries argued that many of the strongest modern brands were built primarily through public relations, media coverage and word of mouth before large advertising budgets ever entered the picture. He observed that customers trust what a third party says about a brand far more than what the brand says about itself, and that advertising works best once credibility already exists. Companies that leapt straight to heavy advertising without first earning genuine media and customer attention, he argued, often struggled to gain the same trust.
How to apply this to your business: Invest early effort in earning coverage, reviews, referrals and public recognition rather than relying solely on paid advertising to introduce a new brand. Use advertising to reinforce a reputation you have already started to build, not to manufacture one from nothing.
The Ladder in the Mind
Ries described how customers mentally rank brands within a category like rungs on a ladder, and how a company’s marketing should reflect its actual rung rather than pretend to be something it is not. He frequently referenced the Avis car rental campaign built around the line “We try harder”, which openly acknowledged the brand’s position behind Hertz rather than denying it. Ries used this as a textbook example of positioning, showing how accepting a lower rung honestly can be more persuasive than a weaker, less credible claim to be the market leader.
How to apply this to your business: Be honest about where your brand actually sits relative to competitors and build a message around that reality rather than an exaggerated claim. Customers respond well to an honest, specific position, even a modest one, far more than to vague claims of being the best.
Owning a Single Word in the Customer’s Mind
Across Positioning and later The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, written with Laura Ries in 1998, Ries argued that the strongest brands own one simple word or idea in the customer’s mind. He used examples such as Volvo becoming associated with safety and Crest becoming associated with cavity prevention, arguing that trying to communicate several benefits at once usually results in owning none of them clearly. The discipline, he suggested, lies in choosing one word deliberately and then reinforcing it consistently across every piece of communication a business puts out.
How to apply this to your business: Choose one clear concept you want customers to associate with your name and repeat it consistently across your website, packaging, advertising and sales conversations. Resist the temptation to add extra claims that blur that single, ownable idea.
Categories Diverge Rather Than Converge Over Time
In later work, including War in the Boardroom, written with Laura Ries in 2009, Ries explored how markets tend to split into narrower categories over time rather than merge into broader ones. He pointed to how the general category of computing gradually divided into mainframes, personal computers, laptops and other specialised devices, each with its own leading brands. Ries argued that businesses which watch for these splits early, and position themselves clearly within an emerging sub-category, often gain a stronger foothold than those waiting for a market to settle into a single, general shape.
How to apply this to your business: Watch your industry for early signs of a split into a narrower sub-category rather than assuming your market will stay as one broad group. Moving early into a defined niche can be more valuable than competing generally once the split becomes obvious to everyone.
The Discipline of Staying the Course
Ries repeatedly warned against businesses abandoning a working position simply because management grew bored with it or wanted a fresh creative direction. He observed that many companies change strategy far more often than customers change their perception of the brand, meaning that constant repositioning confuses the market long before it achieves anything. Brands that maintained a consistent, recognisable position over many years, he argued, built a depth of association in customers’ minds that short lived campaigns could never match, regardless of how clever the new idea seemed internally.
How to apply this to your business: Before changing your core message or positioning, ask whether the change is being driven by genuine market feedback or by internal restlessness. A consistent position held for years is usually worth more than a series of fresh ideas that never have time to take root.
Learning From the Xerox Computer Failure
Ries frequently referenced Xerox’s attempt to expand from photocopiers into computers during the 1970s as a case study in the limits of a brand name. Despite genuine technical innovation, Xerox struggled to be taken seriously as a computer company, because in the customer’s mind the name Xerox meant copying, not computing. Ries used this example throughout Positioning to demonstrate that a strong reputation in one category does not automatically transfer to another, however logical the move might appear on a strategy document inside the company.
How to apply this to your business: Before entering a new category under your existing name, test honestly whether customers already associate that name with the new offer or whether you are asking them to make a mental leap. If the leap is too large, a separate brand may serve the new venture better.
Marketing Is a Battle of Perceptions
A central theme running through all of Ries’s work is that marketing success has less to do with objective product quality and more to do with how a product is perceived relative to competitors. He argued that many companies pour resources into improving the product itself while neglecting the harder, more important task of shaping how customers perceive it. This is why two products with similar quality can achieve very different market outcomes, with the more effectively positioned brand often winning even when independent testing shows little real difference between the offerings.
How to apply this to your business: Spend as much energy shaping how your product is understood and talked about as you spend improving the product itself. A clear, well communicated perception often has more commercial impact than a marginal technical improvement customers may never notice.
Building a Legacy Through Partnership
Later in his career, Al Ries founded Ries and Ries with his daughter Laura Ries, continuing to write and consult together for two decades. Their collaboration produced several books, including The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR and War in the Boardroom, blending Al’s original positioning theory with newer perspectives on branding and public relations. This long partnership demonstrated a practical lesson beyond the books themselves, that combining an experienced strategic mind with a fresh generational perspective can keep a body of work relevant across changing markets and media environments.
How to apply this to your business: Consider how bringing in a trusted partner with a different perspective, whether a family member, junior colleague or outside advisor, can help refresh your strategic thinking without abandoning the core principles that made your business successful. Longevity in business often depends on this kind of ongoing collaboration rather than working in isolation.
Frequently asked questions
What is Al Ries best known for?
Al Ries is best known for developing the concept of positioning alongside Jack Trout, first introduced in Advertising Age articles in 1972 and later expanded into the book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind in 1981. The idea reshaped how businesses think about differentiation and remains one of the most widely taught concepts in marketing.
What is the main idea behind positioning?
Positioning is the idea that marketing success depends on how
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