When I was a novice journalist 15 years ago, my first editor told me, "Under any circumstances, never disclose the inner workings to the reader, do not tell him what you want from him - let him get to everything by himself." It seems to me, it's time to move away from this strategy and show all the cards in advance. I want everyone to feel a bit uneasy after reading this article.
Autosuggestion
Do you know what you'll see if you try to find a movie about diamonds on YouTube? Try to guess and remember your assumption. If you put aside the numerous videos of Rihanna and those devoted to the game of Minecraft, the top ten most popular videos will look like this:
The first place will be taken by the experiment with a hydraulic press (well, you know, one of those used by presenters effectively trying to break up objects and shoot flying fragments in slow motion). Strangely enough, in this experiment the presenters for some reason put the diamond with its culet looking downwards, and instead of one quick blow they started to press on its table. As a result, the diamond completely sank into the substrate remaining intact and unscratched, while the viewers-commentators got assured that a real stone cannot be split. Incidentally, the video got 16 million viewings.
An ad from Cartier is in the second place. A chic woman surrounded by a dozen smart men at a high-society party, a boat shining with lights and a leopard. In general, all that (including, in fact, the Cartier jewelry pieces), which never happens in the life of an ordinary woman. 15.8 million viewings.
The third place is to be given to a video under the title of How it's made - Diamonds, telling about the process of creating artificial stones. The video, once sponsored by Apollo, has since never lost its popularity.
Why diamonds are a scam, a sarcastic clip deserves the fourth place in this rating. It is telling people (I'm warning, very indecently) that the whole tradition of the engagement ring is nonsense, and there is certainly no point in buying natural stones if there are cheaper artificial analogues.
The fifth place is won by The truth about diamonds, once again saying that synthetic diamonds are cheaper than natural diamonds.
A clip about illegal diamond mining in Sierra Leone is in the sixth place.
In the seventh and eighth places are taken by the documentary films about recovering diamonds of horrifying quality accompanied with a so old film footage that at times it seems that the dealers of the diamond exchange pictured there are about to pull out an abacus to estimate the final cost.
In the ninth place, there is a video story from Bloomberg about diamond mining in Yakutia. The tenth place is taken by still another documentary about blood diamonds.
I remind you, these are the most popular videos - which means that their people found them to be the most interesting and useful for themselves, and shared them with their friends. Now ask yourself: what will your consumer find out about rough diamonds and polished diamonds from these videos? What impression will he or she have about our product? That diamonds are something inaccessible, a sign of high society. That diamond trading is an old-fashioned opaque business. That diamonds are still being panned with a sieve in the river by hungry dark-skinned children. And that science has long come up with a replacement - artificial diamonds. It is the voice of the people that you hear, a footprint of public opinion in its pure form.
"It cannot be!" you may say. I have heard these words not once. And not once I have read the comments to my articles, which said "Why are you so obsessed with social networks? Our consumers are solid well-to-do people, they are busy doing their work and they trust serious sources, not social networks."
Okay, let's see what was written in serious sources over the past couple of months:
I should say that during this period we could come across several really important publications on the development of this industry, which would be interesting and really useful to consumers.
"Diamonds Make the World a Better Place."
De Beers Aims for Carbon-Neutral Mining.
De Beers Consolidated Mines Recognized For Its Conservation Efforts.
All the three links above contain articles detailing the contribution of the diamond business to the development of economies and environmental protection. I think they could cool the ardor of many critics who still consider diamond mining to be devastating.
De Beers unveils next generation diamond verification technology - this article says it's now possible to guarantee the natural origin of even the smallest stones and that consumers are better protected from possible deception.
These publications have only one problem: they are all published on industry portals, which are read only by diamond business people. An ordinary person will never see them – he or she will never ever think of getting linked to the Rapaport website while sipping a cup of morning coffee.
And what is left to the readers of "ordinary" mass media, not related to the diamond business?
"Pink Star diamond becomes world's PRICIEST gem after selling for record £57 million." Great news from the world of luxury! I immediately felt that I, too, could afford some piece of jewelry!
"The ‘Dark Diamond World’ Inside Africa." Contrary to expectations, this story is not about blood diamonds. This one is to say that even those countries that have defeated "blood diamonds" are mining them in backward and cruel ways, using child labor and disrespecting human rights.
"Invest in your diamonds carefully." Thanks for the advice, of course, but most people on this planet have nothing to invest.
"Graff buys $17.5 million 373-carat rough diamond, once part of the unsold Lesedi La Rona" to make a jewelry piece worth $ 17.5 million – sure, that is closer to my budget compared with $ 57 million, but still I can’t afford it.
"Chinese Delegation’s Behavior at Diamond Conference Described as ‘Disgusting’." After reading this article, people from the diamond business are certain to look serious and balanced, with whom you would like to deal (in fact, all is vice versa).
"How I funded my studies by digging for Sierra Leone diamonds." Do you think there is anything good said there? "We often slept on the floor of a room or veranda, with bedbugs and mosquitoes biting us in turns. As for health care, Panadol was all we would get if we fell ill."
"We've all been tricked into thinking you need a diamond to get engaged." The title says so much for itself that I do not even know if it's worth commenting.
Of course, someone can argue that the reader is not interested in articles saying that the industry is doing well. Or that public media take only scandalous materials focused either on sky-high sums of money, or with unbearable human suffering. Those who think so, can explore the news on lab-grown diamonds. Industry media rarely write on this subject, disregarding synthetics as a fully legitimate player in the market. As a rule, their materials concern either cases of "admixing" or techniques for identification of stones. Meanwhile, synthetic diamonds easily find their audience in the socio-political media. Just go through the headlines in numerous TV channels, WSJ, Forbes, or Fortune.
This is already an issue related to the effectiveness of our work. Is our industry good enough to come up with news worthy events that would interest the media and end users? And do our interviews in the industry media, which we give to each other in a circle, have any effect at all - except for a sense of moral satisfaction, of course.
The examples from YouTube and Google perfectly illustrate the general, global problem of the industry: Gentlemen, we are engaged in self-deception and self-hypnosis.
We are deceiving ourselves when we sincerely (sincerely indeed!) believe that jewelry buyers are well versed in the subject. And we are engaged in self-hypnosis when we believe that we sufficiently communicate with consumers through the media, though it’s not true.
Undoubtedly, both views are very convenient. Of course, it's nice to think that your consumer is a smart person of high qualification who does not need to be explained anything and will independently find all the information about the diamond business, drawing absolutely correct conclusions (and it does not matter that we ourselves have learned the subtleties and intricacies of the diamond market for months and years). Nobody wants to admit that their target audience consists of most ordinary city dwellers who watch TV shows (many of which cannot be called highly intelligent), read scandalous news in the yellow press, send funny pictures to friends with trivial jokes, spend part of their life playing computer games and does not at all want to burden their heads with unnecessary details.
Self-hypnosis is an even more pleasant thing. It is much more convenient to give interviews to industry publications than to some socio-political daily, is not it? Industry media journalists speak the same language with you, they do not ask silly dilettante questions, communication with them does not take much time, and taking into account that everyone is in the same boat, they will also send you quotations for approval. It will be a damn smooth text with verified theses, which can be put to your account in the KPI. “Mass” media are quite another thing! They will again ask why we are afraid of synthetic diamonds and when we will finally stop exploiting child labor.
Meet the consumer
Communicating with each other in the industry media, we say that we should protect our consumer. Enlighten our consumer. Appel to him, tell him about the attractiveness of diamond as an idea. But are we well aware of who our consumer is? How does he look, what interests him and how he makes decisions? Or are we "communicating" with some idealized model?
In part, we have already examined the average consumer in this article. Meet completely Average Joe - the average American residing in the market, which is still the largest by consumption of diamond jewelry.
First of all, Average Joe earns $65,751 per year. Not a bad amount, but it does not seem so significant, considering that at the same time Joe has a debt of $132,529.
The American economy, it seems, is growing from year to year. And, according to the expectations of many diamond analysts, the growth of GDP should have a positive impact on the incomes of citizens – thus, projecting on their desire to buy diamond jewelry. However, something goes wrong with incomes earned by people: they grow much more slowly than GDP. Hardships in the life of our consumer are aggravated by the fact that finding a job in the US today is much more difficult than before.
In this situation, the first thing that a modern consumer will think about when buying a jewelry piece is its price. Low income and credit card debts make people more and more attentive to the choice of purchases. However, consumers want the best product at this price level, and departing from its price they start choosing everything else - designs, brands and the ideology accompanying these brands.
How exactly will they choose? It is generally believed that most people are previously looking for information on the Internet to make an informed choice. This is true, and not only for the generation of millennials: my mother is 60 years old, and when faced with something unknown, she also goes first to Google.
But the Internet, as we have already found out, contains a huge amount of information, and not all of it depicts diamonds in a good light. It is assumed that browsing the Web consumers will be able to get to know about the existence of the Kimberley Process and its success in the fight against blood diamonds, and that consumers will be able to find information about social responsibility practiced by various companies, about the deep symbolism of diamonds, systematizing all this knowledge in their heads and meanwhile not being distracted by “blood-diamond-like” articles about African mining ways and by ads of synthetics calling them eco-friendly.
According to official statistics, 88% of Americans graduated from high school, but only 58.6% "went to college," while only 32% graduated from colleges with a bachelor's degree. Every day, most of these people come home from work tired and want to have a rest. It is doubtful that they will charge their memory with all these things if the latter are not presented in a digestible form of an illustrated article on BuzzFeed, or at least as some text that does not have to be searched for part by part. By the way, neuropsychology is inclined to this conclusion as well. The more time it takes to consumers to make a decision, the less confident they feel.
The cost of a product is the only thing that limits the consumer (it is impossible to spend more money than you have on your card) and makes his choice rational. Everything else is a matter of emotional impulse. And emotional impulses in modern life arise every minute. The globalization and development of the Internet have made our life full of events, each of which can become a trigger for spontaneous buying. If you do not believe, remember how many spontaneous purchases you personally made when you saw an ad posted on social networks, or after reading an interesting article, or after hearing a song that reminded of your youth, or after chatting with friends. According to the theory of Martin Lindstrom, one of the creators of neuromarketing as a branch of science, the decision to buy is actually taken in 2.5 seconds - that's what the brain needs to get dopamine from anticipation of the pleasure of buying.
Battle for seconds
In essence, it is for these seconds that the whole diamond-business marketing should be fighting for. The primary impulse for buying may be different. This may be the desire to make a proposal to one’s girl or intention to make a meaningful gift to one’s wife to mend mutual relationship. It may even be the thought "I'm so tired at work, so let it go hang - I will make myself happy with something beautiful!". But this impulse is generated by emotions, and in the few seconds that pass from its inception, a person should think about a diamond.
During these seconds, he or she should at least imagine a diamond in the row of those possible purchases that would satisfy his or her desire. And ideally, to feel that a diamond is the best choice to agree with those emotions, that it is a socially responsible purchase, which will be approved by others, and that this purchase is quite affordable.
What consumers see now, sends them on a completely different track. In the media, they only come across criticism regarding the diamond business and read lauding comments dedicated to synthetics. In social networks and on TV screens they see monotonous advertising of jewelry, representing diamonds as attributes of high society and luxury life, all this merging into an all-pervading glossy noise, in which nothing can be distinguished. All this information does not contain any emotional charge except "buy me soon" - exactly like in the case of thousands of other goods.
To make consumers remember diamonds in the course of these few seconds, the industry needs an extremely concise, but very accurate emotional message. One, that consumers could associate with themselves, which would correspond to their attitude, meet their expectancies. Previously, such an idea was enclosed in the slogan "A diamond is forever." Today, DPA offers the ‘Real is Rare. Real is a Diamond.’ platform, but only time will tell if the association managed to "hit" the target audience.
A successful (I hope) slogan should be accompanied by a set of short theses to be associated with diamonds by consumers. Previously, everyone knew that "a diamond is an eternal value", "a diamond never becomes cheaper." Now everyone knows that "a diamond is a conflict stone" and that "giant holes in the earth destroy the ecology". These theses clearly need to be replaced with something else.
However, slogans and theses only are not enough. In order to make them work, they should appear in the right place at the right time and live the same life that consumers live. The idea that "Real is Rare. Real is a Diamond." should go along with popular TV series, new video games, evening news and trends followed by social networks. The complexity of this work is in that it cannot be foreseen and planned: you never know what will happen tomorrow, what a new fashion will capture the youth in a month. But you need to constantly keep your eye on the ball and be exactly where the interest of the audience is, regardless of what it is attracted to - dousing with icy water or the death of a TV series hero. This has long been understood and successfully used by all brands of fast food and smartphones. And only our market, which was historically considered advanced in terms of marketing, continues to sleep seeing a pleasant hypnotic dream.
Elena Levina for Rough&Polished
