More about Rome, Republic, and Resilience

What happens after you win a world war?

A few days ago, I noted How the Data Grab threatens a 2024 Tech Coup. I invoked Roman Senator Cato the Elder against my childhood hero, Carthaginian general Hannibal. Yesterday (it's the flux) I listened to this conversation between podcast host Sean Illing and historian Edward Watts, Is America collapsing like Ancient Rome?

I was always struck by Rome’s determination to crush rival Carthage in the world war of their time. For several years Hannibal controlled much of Italy, winning battle after battle. I’ve driven through some of the sites including Cannae in Puglia. At Cannae Hannibal's generalship resulted in perhaps greatest military victory of all time, the slaughter of up to 70,000 in one afternoon. As context, the male population of fighting age in Rome then was around 300,000.

Rome held out, and subsequently took the war to Africa, destroyed Carthage, and exterminated its people. It was their ‘good war’, their World War II, and united its citizenry.

Only for a few generations. Watts writes about how facing this existential crisis and achieving security and global hegemony transformed Rome’s economy and society for the better for all. Listen to the conversation. Better, read his book Mortal Republic. I don't want to give anything away, but Rome's successful policies will astonish Americans of every political persuasion today. You can think of it as their Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson years.

Then Watts gets to what came next, a terrifying denouement. Two centuries after defeating Carthage, the Roman Republic fell into anarchy and civil war, emerging with a “genocidal maniac” (Watts' description) as tyrant and Emperor. Augustus. ?

It’s a riveting story, and of course a warning.

The scale of Rome’s losses, and the miracle of its survival in the 2nd Punic War have no equal. But there is an obvious narrative parallel to the trajectory of America since 1945.

Why do I share this here? The LinkedIn platform is for business and professional discourse. Here we should remain in our lanes, mine marketing, advertising, and statistics, and their currently misunderstood but potentially transformative roles within the economy and society.

Telling the story of how the Roman Republic went from hegemony to crisis, Watts notes: "There's a lack of connection between what the ruling and administrative class believes the society ought to do, and what the majority of Romans believe ought to be done."

Yesterday, David Leonhart of the New York Times noted, “It is simply not sustainable in a democracy to have our elected representatives promise us one thing and then do the exact opposite of what they promised”.

I become frustrated to read that political parties employ marketing spin. It gives marketing a bad name. Marketing anticipates and listens to what people want. In America today a marketer would work to give the American people good public education, universal healthcare, women's rights. These are what Americans want and are all taken for granted in almost every other industrialized society.

But marketing has changed in the last two decades, and not for the better. Marketing and advertising revenue, generated by big data and statistical modeling, have shifted power in America has shifted to five big technology monopolies. The industry I once loved enabled the handover of extraordinary wealth to these companies, their owners, and shareholders. They dominate the marketing, advertising, and statistics lanes.

Fueled by advertising and app store revenue, certain of their investors and leaders are now leveraging that wealth into a play for political power through their ownership of their media, platforms and algorithms.

Three thousand years ago Greece's Pericles said, "just because you are not interested in politics does not mean that politics is not interest in you".

I write here because in monopolizing marketing, advertising and applications. Big Tech came into my lane. In influencing voting in the forthcoming election in which women’s health and rights are a major issue, they are in my family's lane. I have Gen Z daughters living in and building their futures in an America where I once saw energy, opportunity, choice, and the solidarity of a society moving forward.

The death of the Roman Republic was not the end of Rome. The Roman state endured for another thousand years. It adapted, became Christian, and relocated to Constantinople until was finally overrun. The date most historians agree on is 1453. Thus, Rome endured more than 2000 years. Scott's working title for his next book is Resilient Rome. He credits Augustus as the rare tyrant, both destroyer of the republic and designer of an Empire that lasted a millennium.

The lesson of Rome is that today we need a political class with marketing skills to anticipate, listen, and respond to what people need and want.

If we don't get that, the best we can hope for is an Augustus.

Stewart Pearson

Stewart believes in Consilience, the unity of knowledge across disciplines. He has lived, worked, and traveled globally in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. He settled in the Evergreen State and Seattle. After studying Statistics and Marxist Economics in the U.K. he had four decades of experience in marketing and advertising focused on building client brands directly and globally.?He was Global Chief Client Officer and Vice-Chairman of Wunderman when it was the fastest-growing major agency in WPP. David Ogilvy once sent him a telex from India and Lester Wunderman told him stories of Picasso from the village in France where both men, Stewart’s heroes, had lived. Stewart is on LinkedIn and Twitter, and at [email protected].