Gladiator Influence Marketing

The scene you never got to see in the movie ‘Gladiator’ involved Maximus making a product endorsement, which is something gladiators really did.

No fooling.

Apparently, influencer marketing has been around for a long time.

You already know that Roman gladiators were professional warriors who fought for the public’s entertainment. But did you know the best gladiators weren’t all that different from today’s professional athletes?

When they weren’t fighting, they lived in comfort and received the best medical care, benefits, drink, women and so forth.

And the most successful gladiators made extra money by endorsing products, just like Michael Jordon.

In one of the earliest versions of marketing in history, gladiators lent their names to the Roman version of billboards and endorsed products to the masses just before their fights.

Wanting to make their film as accurate as possible, Gladiator filmmakers included a scene of Maximus endorsing olive oil. But fearing it would appear more as a parody than a historical fact to viewers, they cut the scene.

Which is a shame because I would have loved to have seen it.