By Ricardo Homs
The death of Alfred Paul Ries, -known as Al Ries-, at the age of 96 on October 7, marks the end of the cycle of one of the greatest marketing strategists. Now Laura Ries, -his daughter and partner- will surely undertake, with a new vision, -according to the dynamics of the current markets-, the reinterpretation of her father’s legacy and also her own personal vision, which she had already been doing for a long time with the books that she published individually, without the participation of her father.
Before the emergence of Al Ries and Jack Trout in the world of marketing, this was a discipline totally linked to administration and Philip Kotler, -career economist-, had already published his book “Marketing Management” in 1967.
However, the vision of Al Ries and Jack Trout arose with a pragmatic orientation, linked to the field of communication, interpreting from a “psychosocial” perspective the perceptions that guided the decisions of consumers in the selection of their brand.
Having been fortunate to have been one of the two founders, -along with Marcelo Sada Garza RIP-, of the Latin American office that represented the global consulting corporation founded by Al and Laura Ries and to develop the projects directly with both, I discovered in Al an intuitive vision to identify the motivations of the consumer, guided by a fine common sense.
A flexible attitude to accept strategic proposals and analyze them was part of his personality.
In the life of Al Ries we can distinguish two stages: the first of them very disruptive and innovative, from which the concept “positioning” emerged and the second alongside his daughter and partner Laura Ries, focused more on branding and the development of brand strategies.
At the time of Ries & Trout, when they were associated, a vision of marketing linked to consumer expectations was glimpsed, in order to generate loyalty to the brand.
Empirically, they identified with great intuition the unconscious processes that start from the phenomenon of perception, and created the concept of “Positioning”, called in Spanish “Positioning” and built a whole theory that leaves aside rational considerations to be oriented to the understanding of consumer needs and expectations.
Today it seems obvious and everyday to us to focus on the consumer, we do not dimension the disruptiveness of this proposal, at a time, -it was the seventies-, in which competitiveness was focused on the quality of products and services, as a differentiating attribute with respect to what the competitors offered.
Consider that until that time the concept of “quality” was mainly associated with the durability of the product, which should have a long service life. In turn, quality derived from careful and well-crafted manufacturing. The same happened with consumable products, such as wine and beer, -for example-, in which quality was derived from the manufacturing process and the inputs used.
Shifting the focus from the product to the consumer represented a risky proposition for two strangers trying to break into the difficult world of advertising, which was what they both originally did.
Migrating from the tangible and evident of the quality of products and services, -towards the intangible world of perceptions-, was truly innovative at the time.
They took the competition of products from the supermarket shelves of the time, -which was the traditional-, to bring it to the mind of the consumer.
From there, taking perceptions to the field of brands, -which are intangible entities-, which assume the identity of the attributes perceived by consumers was a step. Then the competition ceased to exist between products and services and was taken to the field of brands. The rest is known history.
Perhaps the most innovative books by Al Ries and Jack Trout were “Positioning,” “Bottom-up Marketing,” “The Marketing War” (which led to treatises written in the 18th century by Prussian general Carl Von Clausewitz, -with the aim of designing military strategies-, and Ries & Trout adapted them for the first time towards competition between brands).
Another unmissable book written between the two was “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.”
After the publication of this last book, both decide to separate and Al Ries leaves Connecticut, -where their corporate offices were located- and moves to Atlanta, Georgia, to found Ries & Ries with his daughter Laura.
This corporation was dedicated to developing competitive strategies for brands and had the wisdom to create concepts such as “Focus”, develop specific strategies, -and even-, redirect public relations, -which had traditionally focused on the image of institutions , but without commercial purposes-, since its objective was the institutional reputation, until turning this activity into a new competitive strategy, in order to support the creation of the identity of the new brands, giving them credibility and also providing definition to the attributes , during the period of assimilation in the market. In this way Al and Laura published their work “The fall of advertising and the rise of the PR”, translated into Spanish as “The fall of advertising and the rise of public relations”.
Ries & Ries Latinoamericana SA de CV was founded in 2001 after negotiating the terms of the contract with Al and Laura Ries in Atlanta. The majority shareholding of this new company remained in the hands of the Mexican partners.
Serve this text to pay tribute to the great human being that was Al Ries and who was professionally one of the brightest minds in marketing.
Ricardo Homs: Together with Marcelo Garza, he founded the company Ries & Ries Latinoamericana SA de CV in 2001, -a company he directed-, and before that, in 1996, he was one of the founders of the firm The Trout & Partners Co., together with Jack Trout, Carlos Alazraki and Fernando Mariscal, being a shareholder and assuming the general direction.