Al was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father was a school teacher in a one room school and his mother a homemaker to their five children. At 18 years old, Al left home and served in both the U.S. Merchant Marines and then the U.S. Army, where he was stationed in Korea for a year. After his service, he graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana in 1950.

His first job was in the advertising department of General Electric in Schenectady, New York where he spent six years.  But Al wanted to do more than just work at GE the rest of his career. So in 1956, he headed to New York City. Al joined Needham Louis & Broby and then Marsteller Inc. By 1963, he was ready to break out on his own and founded the Ries Cappeillo Colwell advertising agency.

Ries Cappeillo Colwell was successful as a B-to-B agency but the launch of the positioning concept put them on the map.

In 1972, Al co-authored the now infamous three-part series of articles declaring the arrival of the “Positioning Era” in Advertising Age magazine. The concept of positioning revolutionized how people viewed advertising and marketing. Marketing was traditionally thought of as communications. Positioning told marketers to forget communicating the benefits of a brand, instead you need to look inside the mind of the consumer to find a position you can own. Success depends on finding an open hole in the mind and then become the first to fill the hole with your brand name.

Positioning became the buzzword of the decade. In 1981, the long awaited Positioning book was published.

After Positioning, several more best-selling books followed in including Marketing Warfare, Bottom-Up Marketing, and The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.

In 1994, Al partnered with his daughter Laura Ries formed Ries & Ries consulting in New York. Laura was fresh out of Northwestern University and after a short stint at TBWA Advertising she was thrilled to join her father.

In 1996, Al wrote his seminal classic book Focus which continues to be his mantra for successful brand building and positioning. In 1997, the Ries duo relocated to Atlanta, Georgia.

Al and Laura have written five books together including: The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding, The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR, Origin of Brands and War in the Boardroom.

The latest marketing ideas from Ries are Visual Hammer and Battlecry. Visuals were the missing piece of the positioning theory. Words alone can’t build a brand, driving an idea into the mind is best done with the emotional power of a visual. A battlecry is a memorable slogan that leverages the power of sounds.

In 2007, Ries partnered with Simon Zhang to launch Ries China in Shanghai. China is a growing market and positioning has many followers. Ries consults with many top Chinese companies on the principles of positioning including Great Wall Motors, Wong Lo Kat, Robam, and Junlebao Dairy.

In 2016, Al was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame in New York City. The awards pile up but until the end, Al was focused on helping companies build brands in the mind using the principles of positioning. In 2019, he took the stage in Italy in front of a soldout crowd of 3,500. With Covid, he stayed close to home but continued to work via computer.