Marketing example: diamonds

 

Anish Moonka

@anishmoonka

The diamond engagement ring was invented by an ad agency in 1947. Before that, only 1 in 10 American brides got one. The company behind it, De Beers, was worth $9.2 billion three years ago. Today that number is $2.3 billion, and its owner is trying to find a buyer. In 1940, diamonds were a luxury for the rich. Nobody proposed with one unless they had serious money. De Beers had a warehouse full of diamonds and no customers, so they hired NW Ayer, an ad firm out of Philadelphia. A copywriter named Frances Gerety came up with four words: “A Diamond is Forever.” NW Ayer paid Hollywood studios to write diamond proposals into movie scripts. They planted stories in gossip columns about which rock some actress just got. They invented the “two months’ salary” rule, the idea that a man should spend two months of income on a ring. None of that existed before. It was all marketing. By the 1990s, 8 out of 10 American brides wore diamond engagement rings. Then De Beers did it again in Japan, going from 5% to 60% in 14 years. Advertising Age called it the greatest advertising slogan of the 20th century. They were right. The whole business ran on one trick: make diamonds seem rare. De Beers controlled most of the world’s supply but only released a small amount each year. That artificial shortage kept prices sky-high. And the “forever” in the slogan had a second job: if nobody resells their diamond, supply stays tight and prices stay up. Lab-grown diamonds blew that apart. You can now grow a diamond in a lab that is the same thing, atom for atom, as one pulled out of the ground. Costs 80–85% less. In 2019, only 6% of engagement rings in America had a lab-grown stone. By 2025, that number was 61%. That’s from The Knot’s annual survey of 10,000+ newlywed couples. People are buying bigger rings (1.9 carats on average, compared to 1.6 for mined) and keeping the savings. De Beers saw this coming. In 2018, they launched their own lab-grown jewelry brand called Lightbox, priced at $800 per carat. The idea was to make lab-grown look like cheap costume jewelry so people would still pay a premium for “real” diamonds. Prices tanked 90% anyway. By 2025, American grocery stores were selling lab-grown diamond rings for $200. De Beers shut Lightbox down last May. Since 2023, De Beers has lost nearly $7 billion in value. It lost over $500 million in 2025 alone and has about $2 billion in diamonds sitting in storage that nobody is buying. Its parent company, Anglo American, is now in what they’re calling “advanced discussions” to sell off the whole thing. A 137-year-old company, dumped. The greatest ad campaign ever made convinced a planet that a common carbon crystal was worth two months of your salary. The product that’s killing it just proved you can grow the same crystal in a factory for pocket change.

Alternate take:

Before De Beers (founded in 1888 in South Africa) transformed the diamond industry through large-scale mining, supply control, and modern marketing, kings, queens, and royalty across cultures had long desired diamonds and other gemstones for deep, practical, and symbolic reasons. Diamonds were extremely rare, and their appeal had nothing to do with engagement rings—that association came much later.

Here are the main reasons royalty craved them for centuries (or even millennia):

1. Ultimate Symbols of Power, Wealth, and Divine Right

• Displaying diamonds (and gems like rubies, emeralds, or sapphires) publicly signaled that a ruler had enormous resources, trade networks, and the ability to acquire what few others could. A single large diamond in a crown, scepter, or necklace was a visible declaration: “I am rich and powerful enough to own this.”
• In portraits and at court, monarchs were often depicted heavily jeweled to project legitimacy and superiority. Gems turned the wearer into a walking statement of sovereignty.
• In many cultures, gems were believed to carry divine or spiritual power — linking the ruler to the gods or reinforcing the idea of “divine right” to rule. Coronation regalia often included specific stones chosen for their supposed protective or blessing qualities.

2. Extreme Rarity and Portable Wealth

• Until the 18th century, nearly all diamonds came from a handful of river deposits in India (especially the Golconda region). Supply was tiny and unpredictable. This made them far more exclusive than gold or silver.
• Diamonds were one of the most concentrated, portable forms of wealth ever known. Unlike land, palaces, or grain stores (which could be seized or destroyed in war), diamonds could be hidden in clothing, sewn into garments, or carried by a messenger during exile or invasion. Mughal emperors in India famously amassed vast collections partly for this reason—their jewels were sometimes worth more than entire European kingdoms.
• European monarchs (such as Louis XIV of France, who built one of the largest diamond collections in Europe from Indian sources) treated them as strategic assets.

3. Mystical, Magical, and Protective Properties

• Ancient and medieval people attributed extraordinary qualities to diamonds:
  • Hardness (“unbreakable” or “invincible” — the Greek word adamas means this) symbolized strength and permanence.
  • They were thought to protect the wearer in battle, ward off evil, cure diseases, or guard against poison and plague. Some rulers (including Queen Elizabeth I) wore them as talismans.
  • In India and Rome, they were seen as gifts from the gods, splinters of stars, or lightning-struck stones with spiritual energy.
• Other colored gemstones had their own lore (rubies for protection and vitality, sapphires for wisdom and divine favor, etc.), so royal collections often mixed them strategically.

4. Status and Sumptuary Laws

• Many societies had laws restricting diamonds and fine gems to royalty or the highest nobility (for example, 13th-century French king Louis IX reserved diamonds for the king himself). This made them even more desirable as forbidden luxuries for everyone else.
• Owning and wearing them distinguished true royalty from mere nobles or wealthy merchants.

5. Political and Diplomatic Tools

• Diamonds were exchanged as gifts between monarchs to seal alliances, celebrate victories, or assert dominance. Seizing famous gems from defeated enemies became a powerful symbolic act.
• They featured prominently in crowns, regalia, and state jewelry precisely because they elevated the office of the monarch beyond the individual person.

In short, before De Beers flooded the market with South African diamonds and later marketed them heavily as symbols of romantic love (“a diamond is forever”), diamonds and gemstones were primarily instruments of statecraft, concentrated wealth, and mystical prestige. They weren’t everyday luxuries—they were rare, almost magical objects that helped rulers project god-like power and immortality.

De Beers didn’t create the desire for diamonds; it democratized (and commercialized) access to them while shifting their cultural meaning toward romance and engagement rings in the 20th century. Royalty had valued them for power and rarity long before that.