Norman "Sailor Jerry" Collins is a legend. He's the Elvis Presley of tattooing. Back in 1999 Quaker City Mercantile acquired the Sailor Jerry estate and started Sailor Jerry Ltd. from scratch. Now, it's a super iconic American brand that has the potential to one day sit alongside the likes of Jack Daniels, Harley Davidson
and Levi's.

Since we started building the brand from nothing a decade ago, Quaker City Mercantile has grown it into a multi-category lifestyle brand that makes everything from jeans, to jewelry, to rum. We've even made some very successful licensing deals with Converse to make shoes, MTV Games to include Sailor Jerry flash in the mega-hit video games "Rock Band" and "Rock Band 2" and William Grant & Sons to make rum.

Incredibly, our success in developing the brand came with almost no traditional advertising. Relying only on a supremely savvy, viral, web-based music marketing program, we've watched all aspects of the brand perform
phenomenally well over the last several years. In fact, the brand performance was so impressive that William Grant & Sons—makers of Glenfiddich Whiskey—offered to buy the brand for a considerable sum of money from us in 2008.

We've stayed on as the global agency and strategic consultants for the Sailor Jerry brand, and continue to watch our creation grow bigger and bigger. While clothing sales increase exponentially, Sailor Jerry Rum was awarded the Beverage Information Group's Fast Track brand award for an incredible second year in a row. By 2010, the rum will be available in 21 countries.

So before you hire your next ad agency or brand development firm, do a little digging to see how they market themselves. We guarantee you won't find a case study as compelling or successful as this one. What Quaker City Mercantile knows about guerilla brand building isn't just theoretical, it's a proven reality.