Al Ries

Al Ries was an American marketing executive and writer, one of the most influential marketing strategists of the twentieth century. With Jack Trout, he coined the term "positioning" and co-wrote Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, and later wrote the celebrated series of "22 immutable laws" books on branding and marketing with his daughter Laura Ries.

Ries argued that in an overcommunicated world, brands succeed by occupying a single sharp idea in the mind of consumers. His consultancy, Ries & Ries, and his dozens of books made him a founding theorist of modern brand strategy, quoted by every generation of marketers since the 1970s.