An Appreciation: Jack Trout

By Bruce Carlisle

At about the time I launched my first agency, SF Interactive, I remarried. My wonderful wife, Dorian informed me that as a result of this union,I had become related to marketing legend Jack Trout, who passed away June 4, 2017 at 82. The exact nature of our relatedness is kept in a vault. But in this family, everyone becomes a cousin. I got to know and appreciate Jack. Now I wish I had spent more time with him.

In today’s world even the cable guy will jabber on about his personal brand. It’s often difficult to remember modern advertising is a relatively new phenomenon. We owe much to Jack for making branding so much a part of the popular zeitgeist.

Jack–straight off the Mad Men set–who with his work partner, Al Ries, defined the word “Positioning” for generations of marketers in his seminal book of the same name.

His book was required reading for aspiring ad people in the early eighties along with “Ogilvy on Advertising and Jerry Della Femina’s, “From Those Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Pearl Harbor.” Of the three, “Positioning” set itself apart as the prescription for solving positioning problems, not just advertising issues.

It was all quite simple. He would charge clients lots of money to sit with them for a day. Before the end of the gathering he would, with overwhelming declarative confidence, tell the awestruck clients how their product should be positioned. Period. No debate. See you next year. He used intuition, common sense and experience as his only tools and he continued this work well into his seventies. He wrote a new book every couple of years to keep his thesis relevant. He used his market power to bring his wife, Pat with him on every single engagement he took on.

The Jack Trout I knew was a profoundly funny man with a dash of Kennedy and Mi-6 charm. He gave me cover and someone to talk to at our large extended family gatherings on the docks of the family compound on Lake Oscaleta. He was always great with my kids – and everyone else’s.

He never pretended to know a ton about the Internet and was appropriately skeptical of the idiocy that often passed as dotcom advertising. That didn’t stop the media from asking him to comment on positioning and marketing issues in the digital age. Once, as I sped through the Broadway tunnel on my way to SFI, I dictated a response for him to give to a Forbes reporter that he had holding on a second line. He was kind enough to share his byline with me, although he didn’t have to.

As I drifted from running agencies to more of a consulting model, he occasionally acted as a mentor. He once gave me the absolute best and simultaneously the most useless advice on pricing my services. “Well, here’s the deal, Bruce” he would say with his trademark cheerfulness, “I try to price myself high enough so that I don’t have to work that much.” Which is how Jack rolled. Nice work if you can get it.

The advertising and marketing industry has lost a giant intellect and a very funny and entertaining man. He leaves behind his wife, Pat and four grown children, innumerable grandchildren, and “cousins” like me.

Bruce Carlisle is currently the principal at SF-Edge, an independent digital marketing and agency operations consultancy. In addition to working at several New York and DC advertising and PR agencies he was the co-founder of SF Interactive an agency sold to Butler Shine, Stern and Partners where he served as president through 2004. He has consulted with and spoken at many 4A’s events over the last 10 years