Jack Trout

Who they are: Jack Trout (1935–2017) was an American marketing strategist. He joined Al Ries’s New York advertising agency in 1967 and later founded Trout & Partners, an international marketing strategy consultancy. His later books include Differentiate or Die (2000) and Repositioning (2010).

The concept HaELM draws from: with Al Ries, Trout popularised positioning, the idea that a brand wins a place in the customer’s mind rather than in the market, in a 1972 Advertising Age series and in Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (1981). In Marketing Warfare (1986) the two set out rules for defence: only the market leader should play defence, the best defence is the courage to attack yourself, and strong competitive moves should always be blocked. Decode uses these rules to read Google’s part in the Spider-Man campaign as a market leader protecting its position rather than taking new ground.

Decode articles where their thinking appears: Spider-Man: Brand New Day × Google Maps: A Film Promotion Built into a Daily Habit

Source: Wikipedia, “Jack Trout” and “Al Ries”; Ries and Trout, Marketing Warfare (1986); Branding Strategy Insider, “Marketing Warfare Revisited”.