Eddie LeVian, the CEO of the fine jewelry brand Le Vian, is on a crusade to promote platinum jewelry across America.
“The U.S. is the largest consumer of fine jewelry in the world, but when it comes to platinum, we’re an underdeveloped country,” he tells JCK. “From a jewelry point of view, the properties of platinum are unique. No other precious metal has them.
“As you wear jewelry made of silver or gold, it wears off, the shank wears down,” he says. “The pieces are not as durable as when they were new. Platinum has a quality of resilience. As it gets banged up it actually get stronger. So the more a person wears it, the stronger the metal becomes.”
The Richline Group’s successful multiyear “May is Gold Month” campaign served as something of a model for Le Vian when the company began thinking about how to associate November with the precious white metal.
“We were inspired by what Richline has done over the last 20 years with gold,” LeVian says. “They created assets that all retailers used and it’s been successful to build up demand for gold. We said, what if six months after, we created November is Platinum Love Month?
“The reason why we call it ‘love month’ is because relationships that last are those where people are resilient and when the relationship gets knocked, it gets stronger as a result. And that’s the characteristic of platinum. We thought we’d create a campaign to promote how love gets stronger when it’s challenged and tell that through the story of platinum.”
The multipronged campaign includes everything from social and digital advertising to a sweepstakes inviting people to post stories of how their relationships survived challenges and are stronger now because of them.
“We came up with a photography technique that allows us to create the shadow of a heart shape,” LeVian says. “We found ways to do it naturally without Photoshop. All the photos and videos for the campaign use this technique.”
The company also created a multimillion dollar traveling collection of high jewelry in platinum that is crisscrossing the country this fall. But the brand’s selection includes plenty of accessibly priced designs as well (starting at $1,195 for a single-row stacking band with alternating clusters of diamonds).
“We’re going to be doing this campaign on an annual basis,” LeVian says. “We’re hoping to pull off bigger events as the years go by, so the whole country is promoting platinum in November.”
Top: Couture ring in platinum with 1 ct. t.w. Costa Smeralda emeralds and Vanilla diamonds, $5,000
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