Small brands have a business advantage.
Time, money and resources constraint force them to be more creative. Or they die.
One day in 75 BCE a band of Cilician pirates kidnap a 25-year-old Roman nobleman.
Guess who? Julius Caesar.
That’s right, the legendary Roman general who declared himself dictator of the Roman Empire.
But this was 29 years before Julius Caesar became Julius Caesar.
When the pirates tell Caesar they want 20 talents of silver in exchange to release him, Caesar laughs. He tells them they have no clue who he is.
So he demands the pirates to increase his ransom to 50 talents.
The truth is, Caesar was a nothingburger. But the pirates didn’t know that.
Caesar demanded a higher ransom for one simple reason. To boost his importance when news of his kidnapping reached Rome.
Long story short, 38 days later someone pays the ransom. And Caesar is set free. Then he raises a naval force in Miletus, hunts the pirates down and crucifies them.
In 1985 when Tommy Hilfiger opens his first store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan he asks ad legend George Lois to help him.
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