Bridgehead were retained by Pugnare's author, Dr. George Maher, to promote the recently published book to its target audience through the media.
We began by reading Pugnare to identify key themes and notable topics from the book, including how Roman economic growth was based on two vital (and, at the time, new) factors: outright property ownership and a stable, globally recognised money system. The book also details how the Romans were incredible financial innovators, pioneering the world's first pension scheme and establishing the world's first stable fiat currency. For most of the empire's history, the money you owned could be trusted to maintain its purchasing power.
However, Pugnare also argued that despite being pioneers in financial innovation, financial mismanagement ultimately led to the empire's collapse. It detailed how spiralling wage inflation, soaring public spending, and sustained currency debasement led to a complete banking collapse in AD 260 and spelt the slow decline of the Roman Empire.
Using these compelling storylines, we were able to draw parallels with some of the UK's existing financial challenges. We drew the parallel between the currency debasement that sowed the seeds of Ancient Rome's downfall, the reckless use of quantitative easing the Bank of England was pursuing, and the dangers of undermining investor confidence in the currency.
We also looked at other contemporary trends in innovation, such as the use of cryptocurrencies in Venezuela, where investor confidence in the Bolivar has collapsed. We leveraged this angle to place issue comments and opinion pieces with relevant publications to ask whether a cryptocurrency revolution could have saved the Roman Empire.
We also used our links with relevant economic think tanks to secure interviews, reviews and events for George to discuss his book.
Lastly, we organised a series of media breakfast roundtables for George to discuss his book with interested financial journalists.
Our work was a great success. We delivered over 43 pieces of coverage, including a broadcast TV interview to discuss the book. These generated 693 social media shares and were read by an estimated 405,000 people.
Most significantly, we secured an interview for George on MoneyWeek's Podcast, which led to the book being ranked in the Financial Times's top five books to buy before Christmas (2022) and describing it as 'fabulous'. The book was also ranked in The Week's 'Top 10 Business Books of 2022'. The Financial Times covered the book separately and discussed how the Romans created the world's first pension scheme.
Other coverage highlights included a broadcast TV interview for George on GB News and Jeremy Warner dedicating one of his columns to the economic lessons set out in Pugnare.
At the height of our media campaign, Pugnare topped the sales rankings for its subject category on Amazon.
