Back in the 70’s, Al Ries and Jack Trout collaborated on a book called Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind, which has been widely praised for its innovative thinking.
These days, they’ve gone their separate ways, and each has a column out this week, where you can see their divergent points of view.
Al Ries contributes to Ad Age regularly, and invariably the point of every column is “I told you so” and “If only Client X and Client Y had listened to me they wouldn’t be up shit’s creek.” His column this week is about why advertising agencies don’t advertise. He’s a little late to the party on that one: I wrote about the same thing 3 years ago.
Jack Trout, writing on Forbes.com, suggests that all is not lost in the ad industry, like Ries usually does, but suggests instead that agencies get back to strategic thinking–and do away with awards shows. It’s a very interesting perspective.
