Jack Trout

Instrumental in developing the vital approach to marketing known as “positioning,” Jack Trout is responsible for some of the freshest ideas to be introduced into marketing thinking in the last several decades.

President of Trout & Partners, one of the most prestigious marketing firms with headquarters in Connecticut and offices in 13 countries, Trout manages and supervises a global network of experts that apply his concepts and develop his methodology around the world. The firm has done work for AT&T, IBM, Burger King, Merrill Lynch, Xerox, Merck, Lotus, Ericsson, Tetra Pak, Repsol, Hewlett-Packard, Procter & Gamble, Southwest Airlines and other Fortune 500 companies.

Trout started his business career in the advertising department of General Electric. From there he went on to become a divisional advertising manager at Uniroyal. Then he joined Al Ries in the advertising agency and marketing strategy firm where they worked together for over twenty-six years.

With Al Ries, he co-authored the industry classic, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, which was published in 1980. He and Ries wrote a second best-selling book entitled Marketing Warfare. Both books are now published in 14 languages. They also wrote Bottom-Up-Marketing and their book, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing has become the marketing bible, outlining the basic reasons why marketing programs succeed or fail in the competitive nineties. Trout closed the circle with the sequel to Positioning with The New Positioning that became a Business Week bestseller and has already been translated into 16 languages. He followed it with the bestsellers, The Power of Simplicity – a Management Guide to Cutting through the Nonsense and Doing Things Right and Differentiate or Die – Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition which presented the keys to survival in a killer global economy. His latest books are Big Brands, Big Trouble and The Genie's Wisdom that explain why the marketing process is so important for senior management to learn and practice.