For members of the diamond and jewelry businesses who have been in the trade for 20 years or more, the recent announcements by various players in the trade about marketing campaigns may sound familiar.
Ever since De Beers decided, more than a decade ago, that it was no longer willing to almost single handedly finance generic global diamond marketing campaigns (at an annual cost to it that was estimated at the time at around $200 million), the trade has found it almost impossible to unify around a single project.
Although a whole range of diamond industry players held talks about how share the burden of generic global marketing of diamonds, the efforts came to very little for reasons that are outlined below.
Although some will point to the work of the Natural Diamond Council, that body also has found it difficult to create a global diamond marketing campaign that really works. It carries out a lot of marketing featuring actresses and models, along with worthy educational information.
While this is undoubtedly excellent quality material, it is unlikely to be seen by the vast majority of buyers and potential buyers of diamond jewelry.
Recent Developments
At the end of August, De Beers announced that along with Tanishq, India's largest jewellery retail brand, they will launch “a long-term strategic collaboration to connect more Indian consumers with the rarity and preciousness of natural diamonds and amplify the growing opportunity in the Indian market”.
De Beers said that due to India's strong economy, a growing middle class and a large number of jewelry-loving consumers, India has overtaken China to become the second-largest market in the world for natural diamond jewelry with 11% of global demand. However, diamond buying rates in India are well below those in mature markets, such as the US, and this provides a significant opportunity to catalyse further growth for natural diamond jewelry in India.
The sides will capitalise on Tanishq’s deep understanding of the Indian market and De Beers’ expertise to “deepen consumer desire for and confidence in natural diamonds, underscoring their inherent value, rarity and timelessness”.
Among the steps they will take are: building extensive consumer outreach, deepening the capabilities of Tanishq’s retail staff to communicate about natural diamonds, educating consumers about authenticity, and shaping natural diamond and diamond-set jewelry customer experiences as well as a wide-scale marketing campaign to build awareness and target expanding the customer base in the country, including first time buyers.
The announcement followed a similar one by De Beers and jewelry retail giant Signet Jewelers whose retail brands include KAY Jewelers, Zales, Jared, Diamonds Direct and Blue Nile. In May, the firms said they aimed to “share the unique attributes of natural diamonds with a new generation of U.S. couples, ahead of an expected 25% increase in engagements over the next three years”.
Utilizing Signet's trusted brands, digital capabilities and extensive store network and De Beers Group's expertise in creating iconic campaigns, the collaboration will showcase natural diamonds. A new campaign will fully roll out in the third quarter and feature online content, in-store experiences and targeted marketing messages.
Signet's proprietary research indicates that there will be an upswing in proposals and engagements amongst U.S. Zillennials over the next 36 months, following a recent lull due to a lack of couples forming during the pandemic. The engagement uptick is expected to be driven by couples from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds and the LGBTQIA+ community, the announcement said.
To support consumer marketing activities, training will be provided to Signet's 20,000 sales associates to help educate their customers on natural diamonds' unique attributes, including their enduring emotional and financial value and the enormous socioeconomic benefits natural diamonds help deliver for the people and places where they are discovered. Natural diamond visual merchandising will also be revamped and refreshed within Signet's banners to appeal to pre-engagement consumers.
Handicaps Preventing a Single Global Campaign
People being people, they have their own interests at heart and are unwilling to take a chance on paying for marketing that may help their competitors more than it helps them. That applies to diamond companies in the same country, as well as between countries.
There is also a great deal of resistance because some will say that the Indian diamond trade which polishes the vast majority of the world's diamonds should pay more than other countries. After all, most of the world's rough diamonds find their way to the Indian cutting and polishing centers enabling the country's manufacturers to enjoy a huge amount of added value in the diamond chain.
On the other hand, India which indeed employs hundreds of thousands of workers in its diamond cutting and polishing businesses, might say that Antwerp should pay more since the Belgian diamond hub enjoys a position as an important diamond trading center. It could be claimed that Belgium simply imports and exports rough and polished stones with relatively small investments in machinery and technology, certainly as compared with those of India. Historically, it also has enjoyed a great of the added value element of diamonds.
Now, however, Antwerp might claim that with Dubai becoming a major diamond trading center, the Emirate should pay a significant part of any global diamond industry campaign.
Similar types of claims might be made about Israel which for many years has been little more than a trading center, albeit one that has made a good living from diamonds by simply buying rough exporting them for polishing, re-importing them and then exporting them to clients and sales offices around the globe.
And then there are the major diamond jewelry consuming countries, such as China and, even more so, the United States. Would they have a legitimate claim by saying that since they are such important retail centers they are therefore already playing a huge role in promoting diamond and jewelry sales?
Meanwhile, some countries are mostly interested in raising the price of rough production, while others are more focused on promoting polished goods.
Final Words…
Unfortunately, for the reasons outlined above, generic diamond marketing campaigns have been somewhat piecemeal over the last decade or so, focusing on particular companies’ products and in specific countries.
Although companies are not to be blamed for investing their promotional money in the Indian, Chinese or US markets, this clearly has led to a rather fractured international scene.
At this stage, nobody expects a fully financed worldwide generic diamond promotional strategy to come about. The diamond industry has moved too far for that to happen.
And although the effect of the marketing initiatives we have seen remains somewhat limited, we should nonetheless praise companies for being willing to invest large amounts of money in the marketing of diamonds.
Abraham Dayan for Rough&Polished from Tel Aviv
