Top 60 Al Ries Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Marketing is not selling. Marketing is building a brand in the mind of the prospect.”

— Al Ries

Featured in: Marketing Quotes

2. “Good things happen when you narrow your focus.”

— Al Ries

3. “Positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect.”

— Al Ries

4. “The essence of positioning is sacrifice. You must be willing to give up something in order to establish that unique position.”

— Al Ries

5. “The crucial ingredient in the success of any brand is its claim to authenticity.”

— Al Ries

6. “If you can build a powerful brand, you will have a powerful marketing program. If you CAN’T then all the advertising, fancy packaging, sales promotion and public relations in the world won’t help you achieve your objective.”

— Al Ries

7. “The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospects mind.”

— Al Ries

8. “War and marketing have many similarities.”

— Al Ries

9. “Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products.”

— Al Ries

10. “Positioning is how you differentiate yourself in the mind of the prospect. That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospect.”

— Al Ries

11. “The next generation product almost never comes from the previous generation.”

— Al Ries

12. “Strategy and timing are the Himalayas of marketing. Everything else is the Catskills.”

— Al Ries

13. “If you want to build a brand, you must focus your branding efforts on owning a word in the prospect’s mind. A word that nobody else owns.”

— Al Ries

14. “A branding program should be designed to differentiate your cow from all the other cattle on the range. Even if all the cattle on the range look pretty much alike.”

— Al Ries

15. “Your brand’s power lies in dominance. It is better to have 50% of one market, instead of 10% of five markets.”

— Al Ries

16. “Advertising is the way great brands get to be great brands.”

— Al Ries

17. “What’s your brand? If you can’t answer that question about your own brand in two or three words, your brand’s in trouble.”

— Al Ries

18. “To get into the consumer’s mind, you have to sacrifice. You have to reduce the essence of your brand to a single thought or attribute. An attribute that nobody else already owns in your category.”

— Al Ries

19. “Changing the direction of a large company is like trying to turn an aircraft carrier. It takes a mile before anything happens. And if it was a wrong turn, getting back on course takes even longer.”

— Al Ries

20. “The best way to make news is to announce a new category, not a new product.”

— Al Ries

21. “Strategy should evolve out of the mud of the marketplace, not in the antiseptic environment of an ivory tower.”

— Al Ries

22. “It’s better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.”

— Al Ries

23. “A successful branding program is based on the concept of singularity. It creates in the mind of the prospect the perception that there is no product on the market quite like your product.”

— Al Ries

24. “Today, communication itself is the problem. We have become the world’s first overcommunicated society. Each year we send more and receive less.”

— Al Ries

25. “Branding is simply a more efficient way to sell things.”

— Al Ries

26. “Successful brands get into the mind slowly. A blurb in a magazine. A mention in a newspaper. A comment from a friend. A display in a retail store. After a slow buildup, people become convinced that they have known about the brand forever.”

— Al Ries

27. “A brand should strive to own a word in the mind of the consumer.”

— Al Ries

28. “It’s the first company to build the mental position that has the upper hand, not the first company to make the product. IBM didn’t invent the computer; Sperry Rand did. But IBM was the first to build the computer position in the prospect’s mind.”

— Al Ries

29. “The primary objective of a branding program is never the market for the product or service. The primary objective of a branding program is always the mind of the prospect. The mind comes first; the market follows where the mind leads.”

— Al Ries

30. “Marketing is what a company is in business to do. Marketing is a company’s ultimate objective.”

— Al Ries

31. “The most difficult part of positioning is selecting that one specific concept to hang your hat on. Yet you must, if you want to cut through the prospect’s wall of indifference.”

— Al Ries

32. “In our overcommunicated society, the paradox is that nothing is more important than communication.”

— Al Ries

33. “You build brand loyalty in a supermarket the same way you build mate loyalty in a marriage. You get there first and then be careful not give them a reason to switch.”

— Al Ries

34. “The basic approach of positioning is not to create something new and different, but to manipulate what’s already up there in the mind, to retie the connections that already exist.”

— Al Ries

35. “The only reality you can be sure about is in your own perceptions. If the universe exists, it exists inside your own mind and the minds of others.”

— Al Ries

36. “Everyone is interested in what‘s new. Few people are interested in what‘s better.”

— Al Ries

37. “When you try to be everything, you wind up being nothing.”

— Al Ries

38. “Most marketing mistakes stem from the assumption that you’re fighting a product battle rooted in reality.”

— Al Ries

39. “The single most wasteful thing you can do in marketing is try to change a mind.”

— Al Ries

40. “Today brands are born, not made. A new brand must be capable of generating favorable publicity in the media or it won’t have a chance in the marketplace.”

— Al Ries

41. “Don’t play semantic games with the prospect. Advertising is not a debate. It’s a seduction.”

— Al Ries

42. “The mind, as a defense against the volume of today’s communications, screens and rejects much of the information offered it. In general, the mind accepts only that which matches prior knowledge or experience.”

— Al Ries

43. “Customers want brands that are narrow in scope and distinguishable by a single word, the shorter the better.”

— Al Ries

44. “With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good.” Most companies, especially family companies, would never make fun of their own name. Yet the Smucker family did, which is one reason why Smucker’s is the No.1 brand of jams and jellies. If your name is bad, you have two choices: change the name or make fun of it.”

— Al Ries

45. “Building your brand on quality is like building your house on sand. You can build quality into your product, but that has little to do with your success in the marketplace.”

— Al Ries

46. “A perception that exists in the mind is often interpreted as a universal truth.”

— Al Ries

47. “Today brands are born, not made. A new brand must be capable of generating favorable publicity in the media or it won’t have a chance in the marketplace. And just how do you generate publicity? The best way to generate publicity is by being first. In other words, by being the first brand in a new category.”

— Al Ries

48. “Success in business inflates the egos of top management.”

— Al Ries

49. “Quality is a nice thing to have, but brands are not built by quality alone.”

— Al Ries

50. “If you were forced to drink a beaker of di-hydrogen oxide, your response would probably be negative. If you asked for a glass of water, you might enjoy it. That’s right. There’s no difference on the palate. The difference, in the brain.”

— Al Ries