The Problem With Generic Marketing

We all know that a marketing campaign for diamond jewelry will lift the markets and drive new demand, which is needed in this economic climate. Product with an emotional value based message that resonates to the consumer will move diamond jewlery at all levels, which was proven with product messages such as Three Stone Jewelry/Trilogy, Nakshatra, DER and Journey! All agendas aside I believe the trade at large understands this dynamic and will come together in time. The question is how will it be a fair process benefiting all of the trade at large? Will the larger scale players work with smaller groups and companies? With all this said it will take time to create and launch a program, likely 12+ months. So we have some time to work through the issues.

Finally somebody who knows what he’s talking about. The take away from Vybornov’s is that the item sold for $100 to the man for whom $100 is money, be sold as “love” and its commingling emotive. It should never be sold as a “real, natural, mined from the earth diamond that took ten million years to create, and you can have it for only $100.” Many retail people sell ten thousand dollar diamond rings as just that; and great marketing pros can sell 50 buck diamond baubles as pieces of heaven. Vybornov is suggesting “raising the value of diamonds in people’s minds.” It’s not the same as raising the price of diamonds. Do the former and the latter will naturally follow – as it should. This is leadership - Vybornov's, I mean. Luis de Agustin

I agree with Ronnie...we keep talking about "it" and debating who should pay for "it" but we still don't have "it". The time has come for the industry (the complete supply chain) to start working together to promote diamonds to who is ultimately ALL of our customer...the consumer. Also, any generic promotion initiative has to be geared towards promoting diamond as a unique and special product regardless of the size, quality or pricepoint.

The biggest problem with generic marketing is we don't have it yet.
There is always differences behind the scenes. But the industry
needs to come together to promote out product.

I don't think it's the goods themselves that are the problem; it's
how they're presented. Further to Homer and Jenny's points, there
are a lot of consumers who can't afford anything higher-end but
still want diamond jewelry, but when low-end goods are only ever
presented in screaming price-discount ads, it cheapens the whole
diamond category and makes a more affluent customer question the
value of his or her higher-end purchase. And the inexpensive goods
are seldom, if ever, designed in a way that even suggests a higher
level of taste than the lowest common denominator. It's only by
upping the design ante and rethinking the entire focus of marketing
that we will change the perception of diamonds as a valuable
product, not a deal to be hondled--it's not by eliminating the
affordable product. Don't blame the low-end diamonds--they didn't
design or market themselves.

I agree with Homer's comment. I do not sell to the lower sector of
the market, yet I understand there is a demand for these goods (and
they are mined, faceted and set for that reason). Furthermore, I am
sure that segment of the market stretches to afford the $100 item
giving them the “eternal value”.

I suppose Vybornov's comments sound good to the guys at the middle
and upper ends of the market, but there are an awful lot of people
whose niche is making and selling entry-level diamond jewelry, and
a lot of cutters and manufacturers in India who survive by
producing those tiny, low-end stones, and mining companies who
depend on the revenue from selling just-above-industrial-rough to
those manufacturers. Are all these people supposed to find another
line of work just so the other guys can stretch their margins?
That's neither fair nor realistic.