Diamonds – The Greatest Marketing Scam Of All Time

Giving your future wife a diamond engagement ring is the perfect way of saying: I love you.

It’s a sign of an unbreakable bond. Just as a diamond lasts forever, so will your love for each other.

Right?

Or maybe..

Maybe it’s just a rock.

A rock subject to the greatest marketing scam of all time.

Imagine a marketing campaign that convinces hundreds of millions of people in multiple different cultures to spend thousands of dollars on a rock with no inherent value whatsoever.

A marketing campaign that transforms this rock into something that’s deeply embedded in the traditions of different cultures around the world.

A marketing campaign that managed to link a rock to the deepest possible human emotion: Love.

Why do we assume we’re supposed to spend 2 months salary on a diamond engagement ring? Why do we believe we have to “surprise” our future wife with a diamond ring? Why do so many women want a diamond ring on their finger?

This is the story of diamonds. A story of lies, manipulative marketing and human gullibility.

Before we take a look at the greatest marketing scam of all time, let’s get some simple facts about diamonds straightened out.

1. Diamonds are not rare.

   Diamonds are abundant. There are mines around the world absolutely filled with diamonds.

   You can go into one of these mines and find millions of diamonds all over the floor.

   Diamonds haven’t been rare since huge diamond mines were discovered in South Africa in 1870. Suddenly, diamonds were available by the bucket load. The British financiers who organised the South African mines realised that the value of diamonds depended on their scarcity. Especially as diamonds have little intrinsic value.

   Their only choice was to form one giant company: De Beers Consolidated Mines, then take control over the entire diamond industry. Their goal? Control both the supply and demand of diamonds.

   Did they succeed? You better believe they did. People around the world still to this day believe that diamonds are incredibly rare, despite there being diamond mines in South Africa, Russia, Botswana, India, Russia, Siberia, Brazil, China, Canada and The United States absolutely filled with diamonds.

   By withholding most of the diamonds and only releasing a careful stream of them into the rest of the world, Debeers has been able to artificially inflate the price of diamonds.

   And by embedding the message that diamonds are rare into their marketing campaigns, they convinced the public that diamonds are special. (More on this later).

   Debeers was fined $10 million dollars in 2004 for conspiring to fix industrial diamond prices.

2. Diamonds Are Not Forever

Diamonds may be the hardest naturally occurring substance on earth but they can still be smashed with a simple hammer.

There’s a difference between a material being “hard” and being “tough”

People are often shocked when they mange to chip their $10,000 diamond ring.

Not only that, but overtime diamond deteriorates and turns into graphite. While people hear the phrase “diamonds are forever” and imagine that their diamond ring will exist into eternity, actually it will eventually deteriorate into graphite.

Just head onto Youtube and search for “smashing a diamond” to see countless videos of people smashing diamonds into pieces with a hammer.

That’s because “diamonds are forever” is just another idea that came from the greatest marketing campaign of all time.

The Greatest Marketing Scam Of All Time

In 1938, the value of diamonds was declining. All over the world diamond mines were being opened. The demand wasn’t enough to meet the supply.

So Debeers Consolidated Mines (who had a monopoly on diamond mining) needed to find a way to increase the demand for diamonds. They needed a marketing campaign. This marketing campaign would go on to be the most successful marketing campaign of all time.

Harry Oppenheimer the owner of Debeers at the time, met with the advertising agency N.W. Ayers who had the task of increasing the demand for diamonds. The plan was to instil in the public the idea that diamonds were a gift of love. And that the larger and finer the diamond, the greater the expression of love.

There was no brand name to be advertised. The only goal was to create an association in the mind of the public between diamonds and romance.

Their first target: Hollywood.

Ayers opened a Hollywood office and would give out diamonds to producers. And in return the producers would showcase the diamonds in a favourable way during the movie.

They wanted to create the idea that a man should surprise his woman by presenting her with a diamond. (After all, if the woman was brought in on the decision of which gem to put in the engagement ring, she might have lots of other ideas of what she wanted).

This was some of the first product placement ever seen on television. Diamonds were used endlessly in movies where the man was proposing to the woman.

A movie that was originally called “Diamonds Are Dangerous” was conveniently re-titled “Adventure In Diamonds” through the influence of Ayers. And many actors were rarely ever seen in public without their Debeers diamonds.

Ayers even managed to strike a deal with The Queen Of England. In American minds, the British royal family was the ultimate ideal of how to behave in the upper class. Diamonds came from British colonies, so the royal family was perfectly happy to work with Ayers.

Ayers managed to encourage Queen Elizabeth to wear diamonds rather than other gemstones. Ayers managed to turn the royal family into a sales agent.

Ayers also added photographs in popular magazines to reinforce the link between romance and diamonds. Photographs would show the glittering stone on the hand of desirable and famous women of the time.

In 1941, just 3 years later, the advertising agency Ayers reported that the sale of diamonds had increased by 55% in the United States since 1938.

In 1947, Ayers furthered their marketing campaign by giving lectures in American high schools. An Ayers report states: “All of these lectures revolve around the diamond engagement ring, and are reaching thousands of girls in their assemblies, classes and informal meetings in our leading educational institutions”

So Ayers was creating the link between diamonds and romance in the minds of the American population before they were even adults.

The sales of diamonds had skyrocketed and profits were enormous. But Debeers had a new problem.

They feared that if people began to sell second-hand diamonds back into the marketplace, prices would start to fall.

So they had to instill into the public the idea that you should never sell a diamond. That people should hoard these diamonds in cupboard draws at home instead of selling them on.

And so a slogan was born: A Diamond Is Forever.

This was the first stroke of genius in this incredible marketing campaign.

Of course, as stated earlier in this article diamonds are not forever. But in the television era (before the internet) people had no real method of fact-checking the information given to them by advertising.

The American people bought it.

Near the end of the 1950’s Ayers reported: “Since 1939 an entirely new generation of young people has grown to marriageable age…To this new generation a diamond ring is considered a necessity to engagements by virtually everyone”.

Diamond engagement rings were so ingrained into the culture that people who couldn’t afford them would “defer the purchase” rather than forgo the ring altogether.

By the 1980s, the public held more than 500 million carats of diamonds – more than 50 times the number that was held in diamond mines around the world.

If this amount of diamonds was sold back onto the market, the diamond industry would be destroyed. Especially if customers found out that their diamonds are worth far less than they thought after they tried to sell them back to the store.

So even to this very day, the diamond industry relies on the myth that “A Diamond Is Forever”.

In the 1950s, the Soviets discovered a huge diamond mine in Siberia. This was a big problem for Debeers.

If the Soviets dumped their diamonds onto the market, the price of diamonds would plummet.

So Debeers struck a deal with the Russians and managed to bring this diamond mine under it’s control to continue controlling the supply of diamonds.

This mine contained an enormous number of smaller diamonds (Too small to go on an engagement ring). So Debeers created the Eternity Ring.

The Eternity Ring, made up of 25 tiny Soviet Diamonds, was marketed as a ring that could “rekindle” love in a long marriage. Of course, the real reason for the Eternity Ring was to make use of the endless numbers of smaller diamonds lying around in the Soviet Mine.

So during the height of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, millions of people were walking around unknowingly wearing a ring made up of diamonds from inside enemy territory.

In the 1970s, after extensive market research Ayers concluded the following:

“Women are in unanimous agreement that they want to be surprised with gifts…. They want, of course, to be surprised for the thrill of it. However, a deeper, more important reason lies behind this desire…. “freedom from guilt.” Some of the women pointed out that if their husbands enlisted their help in purchasing a gift (like diamond jewelry), their practical nature would come to the fore and they would be compelled to object to the purchase.”

The market research also found that while women would often talk in interviews about diamonds being “flashy” and “overdone”, women had an underlying attitude that diamonds were a sign of success and status.

In other words..

Women didn’t like to ask for diamonds, but they were still happy when they received them.

The research concluded that men felt as though they were expected to buy a diamond ring and women happily accepted them as a symbol of her status and achievements.

So from the 1970’s onwards, Ayers created advertising that specifically emphasised the element of surprise in presenting a girl with a diamond ring.

Here I present the 2nd stroke of genius of this incredible marketing campaign.

That you should spend 2 months salary on your engagement ring.
This rule has nothing to do with the tradition of marriage. No such rule was heard of before the 1980s when Debeers came up with the idea.

This rule was 100% invented by a Debeers marketing campaign.

Even to this day the idea prevails: You need to spend 2 months salary on your engagement right? That’s just what you do.

They chose not go with a suggestion of a specific amount of money that should be spent, but instead to go with 2 months salary. The genius of this suggestion is that it can be applied to anyone.

Whether you’re extremely rich, middle class or poor, you can spend 2 months salary on an engagement ring.

What’s 2 months salary when it can buy something that will last a lifetime? Because don’t forget, A Diamond Is Forever.

This truly is the greatest marketing campaign of all time.

What other marketing campaign has managed to embed their product (diamonds) so deeply into our lives?

This Debeers marketing campaign managed to place their product right in the centre of our love lives.

Their product is buried so deeply in our society that there is actually widespread social pressure pushing you towards buying diamonds. (This social pressure has faded in recent years).

After all..

What kind of pathetic man can’t work for a measly 2 months to buy his future wife an everlasting token of their love? Man up and pay up.

I would instead ask different questions: What kind of man cluelessly falls for a marketing created by more powerful men to take his money? What kind of man spends two months salary on a rock made of carbon because he was pressured into it by society?

The Greatest Threat To The Diamond Industry – Lab Grown Diamonds

The diamond industry in big trouble.

Due to advances in technology diamonds can now be created in a lab. Worst still they are 100% identical to natural diamonds. Experts can’t tell them apart. And they can be bought at a fraction of the cost.

China is already flooding the market with lab grown diamonds and this trend will only increase. The technology for creating artificial diamonds will continue to improve at an accelerating rate.

And unlike natural diamonds, they’re 100% ethical. Nobody has died to produce artificial diamonds. Nobody in Africa has slaved away digging in the blistering heat to dig up artificial diamonds.

Lab grown diamonds will almost inevitably destroy the diamond industry. But the diamond industry isn’t going without a fight. How can you fight against this inevitable trend: Another marketing campaign.

See the video below for a full analysis of the new “Real Is Rare” Commercial.

The new Real Is Rare campaign is the diamond industry (including Debeers) using the only leverage it has left: The fact that diamonds do in fact take billions of years to form naturally.

Yet this new add campaign still continues to perpetuate the lie that natural diamonds are rare. Which they aren’t. At all.

In fact, to this day natural diamonds are 1000 times less rare than lab created diamonds.

This very same lie is spread not only through advertisements but on websites throughout the internet (Usually the ones who happen to also be selling natural diamonds.What a coincidence).

This lie is subtly planted throughout all of the “guides” you’ll find on the internet. All of which are either on a website selling diamonds or written by someone from the diamond industry.

The fact that diamonds aren’t actually rare has been a closely guarded secret in the industry for over 100 years. And even in 2020, the diamond industry is still trying to perpetuate this lie.

Every now and again a marketing campaign comes along that exceeds all others. And the Debeers marketing campaign for diamonds is without a doubt The Greatest Marketing Scam Of All Time.