Diamonds and How They Became Popular
In this article it explains the history of the diamond rings and how it came into popularity over other gemstones. It explains how the author was looking for a diamond ring for his wife because it was the social norm to give a diamond engagement rings and was investigating the cost and valuations of diamonds. From 1939-1979, De Beer has increased wholesale diamond sales in the US from $23 million to $2.1 billion while also increasing their advertising budget from $200,000 to $10,000,000. This is known as the “diamond invention”. De Beers had essentially convinced the market and world that diamonds were the rarest and the purest gemstone to give to your significant other.
Percent of First Time Brides Who Receive Diamond Engagement Rings
De Beer did this by employing Ayer, an ad agency from New York, to portray the narrative that diamonds were synonymous with love and romance. Ayer used movie idols to market the idea of diamonds as opposed to marketing the diamond itself or the De Beer company as a brand. Ayer had given the movie idols diamonds as a part of his marketing plan to make diamonds as an idea more popular. Also, Ayer set up interviews and short magazine segments that would highlight the importance of the diamond as a symbol for eternal love and romance. This was in tandem with lectures throughout America that would reeducate high school students, the next generation needing engagement rings. Ayers had created a campaign to persuade the world that diamonds are the best symbol for love and romance therefore making the best and perfect gemstone for an engagement ring or other jewelry.
De Beers was successful because of how the advertisement campaign was done. If this situation was graphed out with each person being a node, the people who were given the diamonds as a promotion (movie idols) were the nodes with the most connections with other nodes. These may have been weak ties such as audience members and the movie idol. Although this may not seem like a connection, in the scope of marketing, the weak tie would be made through the audience member liking the movie idol. The movie idols acted as a way into each of clusters. Oftentimes the clusters would have more than one connection to the movie star and this would incentivize others in the cluster to also change over to diamonds. The initial nodes in this graph would be the movie stars, and nodes that were convinced to change from the adds and interviews of the movie stars would be the nodes to next change to diamonds. People in the cluster have strong ties with each other and this creates a level of influence each node has on each other. In the next iteration, the neighbors of the nodes in the cluster that just changed would have a high chance to change to diamonds themselves and this would continue until diamonds captured the gemstone market for engagement rings. This is essentially what De Beer and Ayer had planned. Ayer had also targeted the generation that would next be married to solidify the market notion that diamonds are a symbol for eternal love and romance while also maintaining the high status and class of diamonds. In cultures where marriages are structured differently, diamonds did not become as popular however as a whole, De Beer and Ayer had rid of any doubts that diamonds were the rarest, best, and highest of class for engagement rings.