One campaign, entitled It’s a Long Journey to Become the One, promotes the company’s Forevermark brand, with the overall message said to highlight the “rigorous selection process” of a Forevermark diamond.
Spanning a range of advertising mediums, the campaign includes a short film-style television commercial, print advertisements as well as social media promotion using the hashtag #TheOne.
It also marks the return of the iconic ‘A diamond is forever’ slogan.
In addition, the company will launch a separate marketing campaign, Seize the Day, to generate increased consumer demand for the diamond jewellery category over the Christmas season. It will feature “classic” diamond products such as solitaire rings and necklaces.
While the initiative includes some De Beers branding, it’s essentially a generic marketing strategy, which could be considered interesting given De Beers ceased its generic diamond advertising and marketing in 2000.
De Beers’ Seize the Day campaign will target men purchasing diamond jewellery as gifts for partners in two of the world’s largest markets, the US and China.
A company spokesperson said the campaign would begin in late November in the US and run across print and digital, as well as in areas such as a transport hubs and billboards in “select high-impact markets”.
“This campaign will also include the ‘A diamond is forever’ slogan, and it will also include a sign-off from Forevermark, much like the old ads used to have a sign-off from De Beers,” the spokesperson said.
Stimulating demand
“We are delighted to add these new initiatives to our existing Forevermark activities over the holiday season,” De Beers chief executive Philippe Mellier commented.
“This will help to stimulate downstream demand for polished diamonds and create renewed momentum in the diamond sector at a crucial point in the year.”
De Beers has long been championing branding and advertising as two areas of which the diamond industry needs to take advantage.
As previously reported by Jeweller, De Beers CEO Philippe Mellier last year said he believed branding represented a “huge opportunity” for the growth of the diamond industry.
“An increase in the number of emotionally significant branded products in the diamond retail sector has the potential to provide the oxygen for a new age of prosperity and growth in the industry, in the same way that clothes, accessories and fragrances have experienced flourishing demand as a result of brand competition,” he said.
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