Women on TikTok started asking the men in their lives how often they think about the Roman Empire. The answer, overwhelmingly and hilariously, was "all the time." Multiple times a week. Sometimes daily. Men who had never mentioned Rome in conversation apparently think about aqueducts, legions, and the fall of civilization with startling regularity.
Men who had never mentioned Rome in conversation apparently think about aqueducts, legions, and the fall of civilization with startling regularity.
The trend is very funny. But it's also a surprisingly useful brand strategy metaphor.
Every brand has a Roman Empire. A thing they think about constantly that they assume is universal but is actually incredibly specific to them. A fixation that shapes their decisions in ways they don't always surface or articulate.
For Apple, it might be material texture. For Patagonia, it might be durability testing. For Nike, it might be the feeling of that first step out the door. These obsessions aren't always in the marketing. But they're always in the product. They're the invisible throughline that makes the brand feel coherent even when individual campaigns vary.
The problem is, most brands don't know what their Roman Empire is. Or worse, they have one but they've never named it. It lives in the founder's brain or the design team's instincts, and nobody has ever made it explicit enough to be a strategic tool.
Here's an exercise I run with clients: ask your team, independently, to fill in this sentence. "We think about _______ way more than our customers realize." The answers reveal where your brand's unconscious obsession lives. And once you name it, you can decide whether to lean into it or balance against it.
Because sometimes the Roman Empire is a superpower. Dyson's obsession with airflow engineering is weird and specific and it's also why their products feel like nothing else on the market. Their Roman Empire is their moat.
But sometimes the Roman Empire is a blind spot. A brand so obsessed with their own technical excellence that they forget their customer doesn't care about thread count or processing speed. They care about how the thing makes them feel. Internal obsessions can create incredible products or incredible disconnection, depending on whether the obsession serves the customer or just the brand's own ego.
My cat Truffles thinks about the red dot from the laser pointer approximately four hundred times a day. He's obsessed. And his obsession makes him extremely good at pouncing. But it also means he ignores the perfectly good window bird entertainment happening three feet away. Obsession focuses you. It also blinds you.
Know your Roman Empire. Name it. Decide if it's serving you. And then either build your strategy on it or deliberately look out the other window.