A Fake Jerome and real diamonds?

(polishedprices.com) - Mining Weekly reports that the Diamond Producers Association is lobbying for its advertising fund to be raised tenfold from $6 million to $60 million. The article refers to the fact that overtime De Beers had cut its marketing budget in half to $100 million before effectively stopping generic advertising, all one of the disastrous consequences of their Supplier of Choice strategy in 2001. My understanding is that De Beers no longer owns the ‘Diamonds are Forever’ slogan, which they transferred into De Beers LV or the jewellery business, instead we have got the Coke muse, about ‘Real’… who wants dreams to be real? In the FT it has been reported that Sotheby’s is suing to reclaim the proceeds of the sale for a painting of Saint Jerome that has subsequently proved to be a fraud. Lastly, I read this headline in Vogue, “This is your new source for conflict free ethical (and gorgeous) engagement rings”. It does not take a genius to guess that they are referring to Lab grown diamonds, or as the trade likes to use the pejorative term, synthetic diamonds. To me these three bits of news or information, which I presume bypass the fashion for fake information, though it is difficult to comprehend how anyone thinks raising advertising spend to $60 million, given the absence of coordinated generic advertising for so long, can make much difference.