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   Once upon a time in the jungles of brazil there used exist one of the rarest and valuable things on earth... Diamonds! It used to occur only at rare mining sites. Every year, it is said, just few pounds of these precious gemstones were found and mined.

          Suddenly, one day, huge diamond mines were discovered. It was in South Africa, near Orange river. Instead of pounds, diamonds could be now scooped out in tons.

          This was a catastrophe for diamond producers and investors. The precious gemstone was on the verge of loosing its intrinsic value. As a solution, they all came together giving birth to a cartel known as ‘De Beers group’. This enabled them to control the world production of diamonds as a single entity. 

          Now what they wanted was to level up the demand with the supply. So, they hired an advertising agency ‘N. W. Ayer.’

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Intended influence 

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          First of all, they wanted to swerve the cash flow of consumers towards diamonds, which was currently flowing towards ‘competitive luxuries’. And not just that, they wanted to create such a need of diamonds that it would be in contention with even retail utility goods and services. 

          They aspired people to associate a diamond (a diamond ring, to be more precise) with romance. For that diamond had to permeate the culture of commemorating betrothal with a ring…

          Culturally, there indeed was a tradition of commemorating betrothal with a ring but it used to happen with the rings of gemstones like ruby, sapphire, emerald etc. So in addition to ‘competitive luxuries’ there were things to be taken care of in their own bailiwick as well.

          A size of a diamond was expected to get associated with the amount of love. Larger the size, greater is the sentiment.

          Also they wanted to prevent people from reselling the diamonds, because reselling would cause diamond prices to fluctuate. People would look at diamonds as a commodity through investment perspective. Which would lead to the insecurity as its attached to any other investment option. But diamond has to be bought by everyone (not just investors) and price fluctuations shouldn’t create an anxiety, was on the agenda of Dee Beers. They wanted to eliminate the possibility of existence of aftermarket, which would’ve been a hindrance for having the control over the market.

          One more image they wanted to project was, a diamond has to be seen symbolic to a man’s success in life. It should be regarded as a socio-economic achievement of the families.

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Target market

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          In most of the countries of Europe, gifting a diamond ring was never a tradition. In the remaining countries of the continent, diamond was thought of as the jewel of privileged class and not the middle class masses. In addition to that, Europe was on the verge of a war. So it was unfavorable to market diamonds there. Comparatively, US was the best bet to try to sale the diamonds there.

          Target audience were preferably males who were reportedly involved as buyers of diamond rings 90% of the times.

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Strategies and tactics deployed

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          In the world of advertising, what N W Ayer was attempting, served as an introductory case of Primary Demand advertising

          Also, ‘product placement’ was implemented for the first time as a tactic of influence. As the purpose was to embed subtly, movie stars were used to employ bandwagon effect keeping them in their natural settings i.e. in movies. (rather than having them appear in proper commercials)

          In addition to that, PR stories were created and efforts were put in, to encourage publications to provide coverage. These stories depicted various celebrities gifting diamonds to their loved ones. Photographs were publicized, embodying well known female figures with glittering diamonds on their fingers. 

          On radio talk shows, fashion designers started talking about fashion trend of diamonds. Whereas, their mere utterance of the remark was an attempt in itself to kick start one. 

          Even the British royal family was envisioned to be of assistance to the diamond industry. (The founder of De Beers was a British. The bank which financed it was British too) and to surprise, British queen went on a trip to African orange river diamond mines. Of course, the publicity of the trip was very well taken care of. A diamond mining company’s founder, there in Africa, gifted the queen with a precious diamond (to the mere coincidence, this gentleman was an elected board of director of Dee Beers) and queen accepted the gift.

          Along with the multitudes, even the elites were taken care of. For them, advertisements in lush magazines were imprinted. This had a very unique theme and idea behind it. These advertisements had reproduced paintings from great artists like Picasso. Agency wanted to inculcate the image of diamonds as a unique works of art just as these historical paintings are.

          All the advertisements manifested a particular color, a new color introduced as ‘Diamond Blue.’

          A slogan, 'A diamond is forever' was introduced to imprint the idea of diamond being a unique art, not something that should be resold. This slogan was an official motto of De Beers. They wanted to affix timelessness with a Diamond. To be seen as a symbol of eternal love. Ads started portraying the same. "May your happiness last as long as your diamond” said an advert with honeymoon pictures of some couple. My favorite is "Wear your diamonds as the night wears its stars, ever and always . . . for their beauty is as timeless” an example of excellent copyrighting.

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The Japanese tale 

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Scenario 

          Dee Beers uphold the aspiration of extending their market to japan. Japan had entirely different culture than that of America. Marriages were arranged by relatives and elderly. Prenuptial love was never a part of Japanese culture. Furthermore, there was never a tradition of commemoration betrothal with a ring. Millions of American soldiers were deployed in japan since 12 years and still it had no cultural influence so far in terms of engagement rings or diamonds.

 

Strategies and tactics deployed

          As such a thing never existed in Japanese culture, they didn’t try to push it through. Instead they brought it about. In their advertisements, they portrayed charming young women with western facial construct, in fashionable western cloths with flickering diamond ring on her finger. They were all shown to be engaged in some sort of physical activities or sports like yachting, ocean swimming, camping etc. which was never a part of Japanese culture. In fact, it was against the culture. All the automobiles, sports equipment, artifacts shown in the ads in the background were also clearly foreign imports. And there always used to be a Japanese man in the background with, again, in fashionable European outfits. These ads were insinuating the message of entering into the new modern Japanese era with a break in the worn out culture. And somewhere, diamond was symbolizing the transition.

 

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The soviets and a new diamond challenge

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          Suddenly, one day, diamond mines were discovered in soviet. And these diamonds were small in size compared to those which were being marketed by De Beers. And in fact, it was 'the size' which was being used as a tool to implant the idea of love with the diamond. The larger the diamond, more are the sentiments associated with it. There was a risk of loosing the control over the market. So, De Beers persuaded soviets to join the cartel and N W Ayer once again geared up to come up with something to deal with the ‘size’ problem.

 

Strategies and tactics deployed

          Their advertisements now started exhibiting smaller diamonds. This time they emphasized on quality, cut and color of a diamond than the size. They started projecting its image as an object of perfection where size is irrelevant. They kick started the campaign of influencing to gift diamond even in the later stages of marriage, framing it as a symbol of ‘perpetual love’. For the occasions in the later stages of life where your emotions and feelings are to be conveyed.

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Perk

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          One of the tactics I personally liked the most in the overall ‘diamond invention’ was, they not only tried to appeal emotionally & expected results, but also they took care of rationally thinking paradigm of the audience and strategized their pathos in such a way, that it will nullify the rational anxieties as well.

          For example, for the masses, which were at the receiving end of the influence, it was a substantial sum of money to put in to purchase a diamond. As a home minister of the family or even a lover of a man, women can’t approve this exorbitant spending cheerfully even though they actually might have the desire for it. Because it was them for whom the amount was being spent. So agency came up with ‘surprise’ as a tool for men to gift diamond, for the men who wanna prove their success with the emblem of diamond and appease their woman. Agency projected a diamond as a surprise gift through their ads. This way, the guilt feel wouldn’t be there for women as they would not be actively involved in the buying decision. And at the same time, they would be happy to receive what they fancied. 

 

 

Results

 

The Japanese –

          In spite of all the adversities, the agency could achieve the success of getting Japanese to spend their hard earned money to fulfill their psychological need of this product.

          Over a period of 5 yrs, since the launch of the campaign, the percentage of Japanese women wearing a diamond ring post engagement rose from 5 to 27. In further 9 yrs., the percentage figure hit 60.

          It was so permeated in the culture that, in case of financial adversity at the time of engagement, men chose to defer their purchase of diamond ring than to swear it off. There have been incidences where Japanese men have put in their 3-4 months’ salaries to buy that one piece of carbon compound. 

 

The soviets – 

          These campaigns, post discovery of miniature diamond mines, got so successful that, at some point of time, the rate of demand for diamonds exceeded the rate at which they were being produced. Then the agency again employed strategies to control the demand pace... like for e.g. By offering 20% discount on larger diamonds.

 

The big picture –

          It wasn’t a smooth road. There were many ups and downs. There were many incidences where it required to be malleable and flexible, molding the strategies accordingly. But what remained applicable in all situations was the slogan ‘a diamond is forever’. That was a hell of a masterpiece. Subsequently the slogan was proclaimed as 'Slogan of the century’ by ad age.

          It had all started in 1939. The advertising budget spent in that year was around $200,000. Year by year, as the calendar hit 1979, the budget had amplified to $10 million. But, the diamond sales from 1939 to 1979 had rose from $23 million to $1.2 billion. So if you do the math, one can only smell money.

 

          The diamond invention is one of the crème de la crème of global advertising industry. It just lent credence to the notion that, you can sell anything... you just need to know how.

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