DTC Unveils New Holiday Commercial

By Rob Bates -- JCK Online, 12/1/2006 2:00:00 AM

The Diamond Trading Company is unveiling a new Christmas advertising campaign built around the theme, “This Christmas say everything without saying a word.”

“We’ve done research, and men have trouble sometimes expressing emotions to their beloved,” notes Christina Lilly, core program director for JWT, the Diamond Trading Company’s U.S. marketing firm. So, the campaign says, let diamonds talk for you. “Diamonds let men say everything that’s in them,” Lilly says.

The campaign is built around the idea that consumers want to grow closer with their loved ones this holiday. “We’ve been seeing a lot of public divorces and splitting up of Hollywood celebrities,” says Lilly. We found people want to have more of an intimate relationship with their loved ones. People know deep in their hearts what’s most important.

The campaign will include a new commercial, “Sleeping Beauty” (see sidebar), as well as radio and online components.

The target audience for the campaign is—as usual for the DTC—men, but this time the campaign is unfolding according to its research on male buying habits. Men make the decision to purchase diamonds early on, Lilly explains, and so the DTC will be advertising heavily around Thanksgiving. But it takes them a while to buy, because men tend to shop around. “They told us they are browsing three to five times, if not more,” Lilly says. “They take time and lots of consideration.” The final decision is made right before Christmas, so that’s when the DTC will concentrate its fire-power. “We are doing an ad blitz in the last two weeks,” Lilly says.

This Christmas the DTC is also running another new commercial for its Journey diamond jewelry. “Dandelions,” which debuted in August, features two soul-mated dandelions flying in the air together to the strains of Dusty Springfield’s “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?”

DTC Awakens 'Sleeping Beauty’

The Diamond Trading Company’s Christmas theme, “This Christmas say everything without saying a word,” is the basis of its new holiday commercial, “Sleeping Beauty.”

The commercial was still being completed at press time, but here’s the scenario: It’s Christmas morning in a couple’s Manhattan apartment. The world is hushed, the couple’s son is asleep, and the woman is sleeping silently. The man tip-toes to a bureau where he opens a chest and finds a diamond necklace, which he places on his sleeping wife’s neck, and then pretends to go back to sleep.

The wife awakens. She feels something around her neck, registers an expression of surprise, and softly kisses her husband. The commercial fades to black.

“We wanted to go more intimate and romantic,” says Christina Lilly, core program director for JWT, the DTC’s U.S. marketing firm. “It’s a beautiful private moment, before the kids start getting up. It’s the perfect quiet way to say 'I love you.’”

There are two versions of the ad. One features a Journey necklace, the other a three-stone ring.

DTC’s New 'Words’

Every year, De Beers runs its “Seize the Day” ads in newspapers and outdoor areas using pithy one-liners to back up its main advertising message. Among the lines this year: