According to an oft-told tale, one night in 1947, Frances Gerety, a copywriter for ad agency N.W. Ayer, was up until 4 a.m. working on the new De Beers ad campaign. She had written all the main copy but still needed a tagline. Bleary-eyed, she cried out, “Dear God, send me a line,” then scribbled, “A diamond is forever” on a piece of paper and passed out.
Today, some people in the diamond business hope for a similar gift from the heavens as they try to revive natural diamond demand. To be clear, diamond marketing has never been easy; even during De Beers’ heyday, it had its share of clunkers. But marketing is more challenging now, considering that “natural diamonds” is essentially a new product category (as opposed to just “diamonds”).
Lab-grown diamonds have proved to be a tough, durable competitor that’s attractive to consumers. Diamond miners and dealers are clearly frustrated at losing market share to lab-growns, particularly in the engagement ring segment. Producer countries worry that their economies could be wrecked, with millions of people thrown out of work. Everyone’s scrambling for an answer.
On LinkedIn last week, Michael Schechter, vice president of digital services for Jocalio, posted a picture of four Natural Diamond Council (NDC) ads he’d seen in midtown Manhattan. One said natural diamonds had “rizz” while lab-growns were just “fizz.”
Schechter didn’t approve. “We are better than this as an industry,” he wrote. “There’s a healthy way to compare and differentiate these two diamonds. This isn’t it.”
His post attracted over 150 comments, most of them agreeing with Schechter. Rapaport writer Leah Meirovich agreed too, asking in a column if natural diamond advertising had “jumped the shark.”
On the other hand, diamantaire Hertz Hasenfeld, in a letter to Rapaport on behalf of the Diamond Manufacturers and Importers Association, called them much-needed.
“It’s not ‘mudslinging’ to make a clear, creative, and culturally relevant statement about why natural diamonds are unique, rare, and meaningful,” Hasenfeld wrote in the letter, shared with JCK. “The NDC and others are finally beginning to push back against a dangerous narrative. It’s long overdue.”
I understand that sentiment, but I’m not a fan of those posters. “Comparative” ads may have their place; synthetic sellers have certainly run their share. But this particular group seemed to sneer at lab-growns—a product that, like it or not, millions of consumers have chosen to buy. Their decision should be respected. And who knows? Maybe down the line, those consumers will purchase naturals. (Some consumers already buy both.) The natural industry should be trying to attract lab-grown clients, not dismissing them.
I’ve since learned those NDC ads were a low-budget “guerilla marketing” test, appearing only in New York. After the negative reaction on LinkedIn, the website they touted—whichdiamondareyou.com—was taken down.
That shows not only the influence of social media but, in a strange way, the power of physical advertising. If those ads were posted online, people may have rolled their eyes and scrolled past them. But with those ads out on the street, in view of passers-by, it felt like they have more “weight.”
The incident also illustrates the natural diamond trade’s current dilemma. It has spent the last few months debating whether to “go negative” and if it should tout gem origins. Everyone knows natural diamonds need to be reintroduced to a new generation. They just don’t agree how.
David Sherwood, CEO of Daniel’s Jewelers, believes every natural diamond should bear a distinctive visual mark. Veteran cutter Maarten de Witte posted his favored pitch on Facebook:
We do not know how natural diamonds are made. Unlike any diamond grown in a lab, natural diamonds come from places deep within the Earth that we have never visited. We know they eventually become crystalized carbon, but we don’t know if they grow from gas or liquid or solid, and we don’t have any idea how long it takes. It is a mystery. Natural diamonds are magical. They have superlative characteristics compared to all other natural gems. Maybe they are even supernatural.
Carbon is the keystone of all life on Earth. Diamond is its purest form. Let’s make that connection. To the best of our knowledge, the Earth quit making diamonds many eons ago.
How’s that for an origin story?
“We need to talk emotionally about what natural diamonds mean,” de Witte tells JCK. “If it’s all about color and clarity and weight, that’s not magical.”
These are all intriguing concepts for promoting natural diamonds. You can find many others out there, ranging from confrontational to celebrational.
I have my own ideas. The diamond industry should adopt the Swiss watch model. It could bring back the idea of “product as hero”—make men feel proud, rather than burdened, to bestow an engagement ring. It might consider a campaign similar to “You never actually own a Patek Philippe, you merely look after it for the next generation”—built around handing down your engagement ring to a future grandchild. And, what the hell, it could revive “Shadows.”
Yet while I can offer clever-sounding shower thoughts, that’s all they are. I don’t have to test them in the real world. When copywriters dream up great lines, they generally run them by focus groups, who don’t always react as they expect.
Gerety, who died in 1999, once recalled that, when she unveiled her now-classic slogan to colleagues, she “didn’t get all excited about it, and neither did anyone else.” It only proved its power when it reached the public.
But even if we could get a modern-day Gerety to do a week’s worth of all-nighters, we shouldn’t expect a magic bullet for natural diamond marketing. That may not exist. (Remember, “A diamond is forever” was just the tagline. Entire campaigns were created on top of it.) Maybe the best we can come up with is a series of mini-bullets, targeted to different markets.
“On some platforms, sustainability messaging does really well,” David Kellie, CEO of the Natural Diamond Council, noted during a panel at the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB) presidents’ meeting earlier this month. “On others, it doesn’t.”
Lab-grown hasn’t relied on just one pitch. Some companies call their stones “eco-friendly” and “conflict-free.” Others talk about fighting the “cartel.” Many ads were centered on price. Crucially, lab-grown won over retailers by allowing them to make bigger margins.
It’s good the industry is taking marketing seriously. Even the online arguments, as overwrought as they get sometimes, show that people care. We saw that passion in the lab-grown community’s early days. That probably helped it grow. But let me give two pieces of advice.
To my friends in the lab-grown world: Congratulations on building an incredible business, almost from scratch. When miners runs “negative” ads against you, that’s a sign you’re winning.
But you shouldn’t root for natural to fail. Not only will that cause human suffering in producer countries—or, to be precise, more suffering—it’s hard to imagine many mom-and-pop retailers maintaining their business on $1,000 engagement rings.
Instead, created gem sellers should look at any new natural diamond marketing as an opportunity. During the pandemic, sales of both kinds of diamonds rose in tandem. As long as the two sides don’t get into a nasty tit-for-tat, that could happen again.
To my friends in the mined business: Lab-grown diamonds are not the sole cause of the current mess. The NDC was founded in 2015, before the great lab-grown boom, because of fears that diamonds were falling out of favor with millennials.
If your business is based on a certain level of advertising, and that advertising ceases, you shouldn’t be surprised when sales fall too. (Especially when so many lab-grown diamond companies do market their product.) There’s a reason Coca-Cola and McDonald’s—two brands with close to universal brand awareness—still advertise heavily. In the 1990s, McDonald’s slowed its ad spend; sales plunged 28%.
The natural diamond industry is now churning out marketing at a furious pace. The NDC has a site full of articles, all designed to be shareable, as well as an education center. De Beers is introducing a new “beacon” and brand. The Antwerp World Diamond Centre has developed its own pro-natural campaign. So has the WFDB. And a lot more marketing is on the way.
“There’s no lack of materials out there, whether from NDC, De Beers, GIA, or AGS,” Kellie said during the WFDB panel. “The content is there. The materials are there. The videos are there. Our challenge is getting the army of people in this industry to push them out there. Everyone in the industry has a part to play.”
Choose what resonates with you, or what you think will motivate your customers. And if you find none of it appealing, develop your own pitch. It’s now easier than ever for great ideas to bubble to the surface.
Whatever you do, keep it up.
“We’re not going to win with one brilliant campaign,” Lisa Bridge, president and CEO of Ben Bridge Jeweler, said at the WFDB panel. “You need consistency of messaging. There has to be consistent effort over time.”
Things seem bleak, but everyone recognizes there’s a problem, which is the first step to solving it. And who knows? The next great idea might be just one late-night brainstorm away.
(Top photo courtesy of the Natural Diamond Council)
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