X
Story Stream
recent articles

 

Investigative Classics is a weekly feature on noteworthy past examples of the reporting craft.

Diamonds have been forever only since 1948. That’s when an American advertising firm developed the priceless slogan that allowed a sophisticated cartel to turn "tiny crystals of carbon into universally recognized tokens of wealth, power, and romance."

Edward Jay Epstein explored this phenomenon in a 1982 article for The Atlantic with three main players: the De Beers company which controlled almost the entire world diamond market; N.W. Ayer, an American advertising firm which led the industry’s pioneering marketing efforts; and the American consumer, whose needs and dreams were identified and targeted by De Beers and Ayer.

Seizing on Thorstein Veblen’s insight into how “conspicuous consumption” reflected and allayed broad status anxieties, a broad plan was created to "promote the diamond as one material object which can reflect, in a very personal way, a man's ... success in life." Epstein writes:

In its 1947 strategy plan, the advertising agency strongly emphasized a psychological approach. "We are dealing with a problem in mass psychology. We seek to ... strengthen the tradition of the diamond engagement ring -- to make it a psychological necessity capable of competing successfully at the retail level with utility goods and services... ." It defined as its target audience "some 70 million people 15 years and over whose opinion we hope to influence in support of our objectives." N. W. Ayer outlined a subtle program that included arranging for lecturers to visit high schools across the country. "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," the agency explained in a memorandum to De Beers. The agency had organized, in 1946, a weekly service called "Hollywood Personalities," which provided 125 leading newspapers with descriptions of the diamonds worn by movie stars. And it continued its efforts to encourage news coverage of celebrities displaying diamond rings as symbols of romantic involvement. In 1947, the agency commissioned a series of portraits of "engaged socialites." The idea was to create prestigious "role models" for the poorer middle-class wage-earners. The advertising agency explained, in its 1948 strategy paper, "We spread the word of diamonds worn by stars of screen and stage, by wives and daughters of political leaders, by any woman who can make the grocer's wife and the mechanic's sweetheart say 'I wish I had what she has.'"

As he details these sophisticated efforts to convince people to buy diamonds, Epstein illuminates the industry’s more prosaic efforts to keep prices high by limiting supply. Much of this involves discouraging people from reselling their rings. In 1982, the public held more than 500 million carats of gem diamonds – more than fifty times the yearly production. Epstein writes: 


Both women and men had to be made to perceive diamonds not as marketable precious stones but as an inseparable part of courtship and married life. To stabilize the market, De Beers had to endow these stones with a sentiment that would inhibit the public from ever reselling them. The illusion had to be created that diamonds were forever -- "forever" in the sense that they should never be resold. 


When illusion failed, hard reality kicked in, Epstein writes: Diamond retailers are loath to buy back stones and, when they do, they tend to offer less than wholesale. 


Such is the business of love. 


Read Full Article 
 

 

 

Comment
Show commentsHide Comments

Related Articles