Marketing History Series: How Diamonds Became The Rock Of Love
In honor of Valentine’s Day, we thought we’d get a little romantic in the next article in our marketing history series. Every day, diamond engagement rings are slipped on the digitus medicinalis of left hands around the world (though also on the right in some cultures). Today, diamond engagement rings have become the standard, but did you know that in the 1930s it was rare to propose marriage with a diamond ring? Thanks to some rebranding and good copywriting, diamonds became synonymous with love & marriage.
During the 1930s, De Beers Consolidated Mines LTD., were struggling with lackluster diamond sales, partly due to the Great Depression. In the 40s, De Beers enlisted the help of advertising agency, N.W Ayer to help increase sales and change America's perception of diamonds. The agency did some market research and found that most Americans considered diamonds a luxury of super wealthy elites.
Ayer advised De Beers to partner up with Hollywood starlets for a major publicity push. Movie stars were photographed sporting large carat diamonds gifted to them by their significant others. In 1946, Ayers put together their “Hollywood Personalities” series featuring descriptions of the diamonds worn by celebrities to 125 major newspaper outlets. They also commissioned portraits of “engaged socialites” in an effort to set a precedent for America’s middle class men to buy their ladies a diamond engagement ring. They wanted to create a sense of envy amongst the middle class and figured presenting glamorous stars with large diamonds on their hands would help drive the sales of smaller diamonds. And they were right, the American public’s interest in diamonds started growing. However, it wasn’t until Ayer hired a young woman copywriter to come up with the campaign that forever tied diamonds to marriage.
In 1947, Frances Gerety, one of the only female writers on staff at Ayer, coined the phrase, “A Diamond is Forever.” She had been working on advertising content the whole night and realized she had forgotten to come up with a headline for the campaign. “A diamond is forever,” just came to her, and she didn’t think it was that impactful but just needed something to present on paper. However, the line became the slogan the company continues to use to this day.
Since Gerety coined the phrase, sales skyrocketed. From 1939 to 1979, De Beers' diamond sales in the United States increased from $23 million to $2.1 billion. During that time, their ad budget went up from $200,000 to $10 million a year.
In the 1960s, De Beers expanded its market to Asia, particularly Japan. Culturally, this was going to be a challenge. The Japanese have long standing traditions of arranged marriages, which typically doesn’t involve a process of wooing and romance. However, the campaign was a surprising success. In the early 60s less than 5% of Japanese brides wore diamond rings. By the mid-90s it shot up to 77%.
Besides the main “A diamond is forever” campaign, De Beers also introduced the public to the “Four Cs” of diamond quality. In every ad, Ayer added a box labeled “How to Buy a Diamond.” In the copy they instructed the audience to ask jewelers about cut, clarity, color & carats.
They also had some other campaigns that veered off from diamond engagement rings. They ran an unsuccessful campaign for men, where women were buying rings for their husbands. They also ran a campaign for single women to buy diamond rings for themselves, which also flopped. Nothing could match up to the association of a diamond with everlasting love and companionship.
Today, 75% of American brides have diamond engagement rings. A single line helped drive a demand that has now become a mainstay of matrimony around the world. Diamonds are no longer an unexpected surprise to mark an engagement, they are expected. In 1999, two weeks before Gerety died, Advertising Age named “A Diamond is Forever” the slogan of the century, forever marking it one of the most important campaigns in advertising history.
