Marketing of Diamonds: De Beers Campaign - Case Study Example

1. JOURNEY CAMPAIGN The Journey Campaign is rating highly on the AIDA model. At first sight, the look and the feel of the webpage attracts your attention. The tasteful green and blue hues, and the landscape comprising of earth and heaven blending at the horizon, are the first to catch your eye, as they symbolize something beyond yourself. The attention is also focused on the diamonds, in increasing size, that flash right out at you due to their brilliant sparkle set against the blue tinge. Interest is immediately invoked by the message, ‘with every step, love grows’, that is tactfully placed next to the chain of diamonds that grows in size as it appears to near the viewer. This positioning is symbolic, of growing love as the years pass being equated with growing size of diamonds. It intrigues one as diamonds are now shown to relate with the journey of life, and not merely as a one time gift of love. The message is different, and it tickles the mind with the new concept – of diamonds being constant companions of the journey of love and adventures. In this manner, the campaign hopes to inculcate the benefits of having journey series, as a symbol of growing love. The inherent need that is present in any couple, that of cherishing life together; getting old together in this journey of life; and having their love grows with time; is what the above campaign addresses. The following paragraph that appears at the centre and above the picture of the glittering diamonds: “There are no maps or directions on the journey of love. It’s about each step you take together and the moments you realize your love has grown and deepened. Journey Diamond Jewellery, a series of stones set in increasing size, symbolizes your journey together” is directed towards establishing a correlation between the inherent need of the couples to experience life together and see their love grow, and the desire to possess jewellery that has diamonds of increasing sizes. Going further in the website, this correlation is reiterated by the following message: “Journey Diamond Jewellery symbolizes the breadth and depth of your unique relationship.” The 28 designs that are displayed for the Journey Campaign, are each accompanied by a message that remind the viewer about the resilience of love, deepening love etc.Thus the above campaign scores points on its ability to convert a need (love to grow with time) into want (to have a symbolic representation of that growing love in the form of journey series of diamonds). The message that the campaign gives out to the targeted prospects is that they start seeing the concept of growing love as manifested in the growing size of diamonds. The action desired here is not to outright make the target go out and make a purchase, but to ingrain in him the new convention that diamonds represent love as it grows over the years. Basically, the campaign is designed to impact the way people think about diamonds. Normally, diamonds are symbols of courtship and betrothel, but this campaign tries to extend that symbolism to growing in love over the years of togetherness. The marketing strategy that was being followed by De Beers till recently was based on the understanding the men being the earners and prime spenders of funds, were the targeted buyers. It was also believed that men bought diamonds for women, as they thought diamonds to be appropriately reflecting their love for their women. “(ref: 6_marketing of diamonds). They also saw the diamond gifts as a way to earn respect and esteem for themselves. However, De Beers’ campaigns also gave due importance to the fact that women need to feel cherished, and getting a diamond as a gift from their men, satisfied this need. The above thought led to De Beers campaigns like ‘eternity’ and ‘diamonds are forever’, that helped develop the perception that gifts of diamonds were synonymous with love, engagement and marriage. The current Journey Campaign, however, seems to deviate somewhat from that marketing strategy. Though the positioning of the product is still aligned with its previous image – diamonds represent love and cherishment – this concept is also extended to encompass ‘growing love’. The diamonds are now positioned to symbolize growing love over the years as the couples set on the journey togetherness. The diamonds are now so arranged in the jewellery piece (increasing sizes) that they reinforce the idea that love grows with time. A substantial change in the marketing strategy can be seen from the fact that the desired purchase behaviour is aimed at ‘couples’, as opposed to ‘men’. During the previous campaigns, like the millennium campaign, the ads were targeted at women first and then, as the millennium neared, they were targeted at men. The ads that were release early on targeting women were aimed at inspiring in them the desire of obtaining a diamond gift from their men. The later ads then accosted men to purchase diamond gifts to show their love to their women, and to establish their worth in the eyes of their women. The current Journey Campaign is, on the other hand, targeting couples who see themselves as spending their future life in love and happiness. The focus is on making the couple see the designed pieces of diamonds as reflecting their everlasting and ever-growing love. The Campaign also gives out a clear idea that a couple (as opposed to a man) should select and purchase the product. This again is in contrast to the earlier belief that women love to be surprised by diamond gifts, (ref: ) so the sole purchaser of the product had to be a man. So, essentially the Journey Campaign extends the correlation between diamonds and love, but it also targets couple to select and purchase them. This is perhaps in keeping with the changing roles and perceptions of women in the present day society, as more women are doing away with the ‘guilt’ that they suffered by spending money on themselves. However, the actual user of the diamonds is still a woman, as portrayed by the designs of the products. Though there is no explicit mention of ‘buying diamonds for a woman’, the idea is implied by the 28 designs that are displayed for the campaign. This means that the though the couple are urged to make the purchase together, it is the women who ultimately wears them. Thus, there is a slight change in the marketing – the basic assumptions that are now followed are not that ‘men buy them, and that they buy them for women’; instead, the couple buy the diamonds, but they buy it for the women to wear. 2. been asked to identify a new target market for diamonds. Traditionally, De Beers has been the supplier of rough diamonds. The major task for De Beers till now has been to firstly create a demand for diamonds because De Beers had a monopoly over supply, and hence required a market for its products. The concept of branding was not so relevant till now as there were hardly any competitors. De Beers was therefore using its advertising to generate demand among the customers for diamonds – thus creating the successful linkage between diamonds and everlasting love. The demand was successfully created, and the sales for De Beers reached $2.5 billion in 2000. On the other hand, the De Beers cartel carefully controlled the supply of diamonds worldwide so that the price fluctuations (due to excess of supply) may never occur. In addition to this, the advertising campaigns were so aimed as to make the buyers keep their diamonds as priced possessions and hence, never re-sell them; thus again preventing an uncontrolled influx of diamonds. (Ref: Marketing of diamonds). This proved to be a useful strategy as long as De Beers had a monopoly over supply, and enjoyed an established market in America, and lucrative markets in Japan and Europe. However the influx of diamonds from the disintegrated USSR, the discovery of diamonds in Northwest Territories, and the drying up of De Beers mines South Africa, have crumbled its supply Monopoly (Mackinnon, 2001). These situations make De Beers look for newer markets as well as newer uses/reasons for buying the product. Also, De Beer’s is gradually shifting into the retail marketing of the product, as opposed to wholly maintaining the supply of un-cut diamonds. For this too, it needs to explore newer avenues so that the market of branded diamonds and proprietary cut diamonds can be developed. The newer ways of marketing diamonds can be identified by geographic regions, by more uses/reasons for purchasing the product, and by the demographic status of the buyer. Geographically exploring, a very lucrative market, as yet hardly explored by anybody else, is of India, China, and the rich states of Middle East like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Dubai etc. These countries, especially India, are making tremendous economic progress with an emergent class of people who have large disposable incomes. These countries are also entrenched in tradition where religious ceremonies, marriages, and rituals require purchase of jewellery year after year. (Dyson, 2006). Here, jewellery is associated with happiness and plenty, as opposed to the western nations where such possessions are symbols of achievement or love. Thus De Beers can aim to replace the purchase of gold and silver with Diamonds, both for religious, ritualistic purpose, and for marriage ceremonies. The Campaign can still have the concept of love as its central theme, but love for a variety of relatives and gods can be promoted in addition to conjugal love and fidelity. The scope is tremendous due to the large populations of India and China, and also due to the high expected economic growth rate of these countries.(Xinhua, 2005). Exploring newer purposes to buy the diamonds, De Beers can come up with new reasons to buy the diamonds. Like its Right Hand Campaign, which asks women to assert themselves and take pride in their achievements, De Beer’s can also target other emotions. These may include acknowledging that women balance work, children and home efficiently. Such a strategy can open up new vistas for selling diamonds – by promoting the concept of providing support, love and acknowledgement to a woman for doing a great job. Finally, a revolutionary strategy will be to target men as the ultimate owners of diamonds. Traditionally, it has been the women who were seen as wearing the diamonds as gifts of love. This concept can be broadened to see the men too as the receivers of diamond gifts. This will generate a novel market, where women or couple will buy diamonds for men. 3. Monopoly Graph for De Beers Profits as it controlled the supply: Monopoly Graph for De Beers as it aims to create more demand There is an expected increase in Profit for De Beers with the new strategy. 4. The Diamond Industry has carefully crafted to associate itself with the world of glamour and glitter – namely the motion pictures, movies and music industry. While getting into sublimal advertising, as when the products and messages are carefully placed within a movie so that the audience cant escape exposure (as they cannot switch channels or go out during a playing movie). In addition to the above advertising, diamond sellers have also discovered the award nights to be excellent venues for showcasing their wares, that too with implicit endorsement from celebrities. An example can be cited of Harry Winston skillfully using the Hollywood award ceremony of Oscars, to successfully flaunt its diamonds. Since, the Oscar night is aired on world-wise TV networks since 1953, it is perhaps the most watched Television show in the world. (Seeing Stars: Hollywood Award Ceremonies, 2007). Such an association, with the stars themselves appearing in Harry Winston diamonds during the awards ceremony, gives the brand tremendous publicity and enhances its exclusive and glamorous image. Over the years, Harry Winston has fitted out celebrities and stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Whoopi Goldberg, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Lopez, Halle Berry, Sissy Spacek, Renee Zellweger, Glenn Close, Gloria Stewart, Faye Dunaway, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Hudson, Ben Affleck… the list goes on to include most of the Hollywood elite. (Seeing Stars: Where the stars shop, seeing stars 2007). There are however, diverse opinions, both on the utility of using the awards’ ceremonies, as the arena to showcase the diamonds, as well as on the morality of the whole concept. Those who resist the sublimal marketing in movies/videos or music, bring to light the fact that it’s deceitful advertising as the products/logos/messages are imposed upon people who have no choice to resist – as these products/logos/messages are embedded within the movie environment and do not stand out, instead they influence at a subconscious level. However, this type of advertising is highly cost effective as the message is indeed seen by a large section of audience and at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising. Similarly cost of involvement with awards functions actually pays off huge benefits in terms of world-wide exposure for the brands, and hence assists in creating newer geographic markets in addition to creating a desire in every women to possess the same. Thus, in my opinion, the association of diamonds with the music and film industry is beneficial for its marketing and advertising, and hence it should be continued. References 1. Epstein, E. J., Marketing a Diamond, reference 6 2. Mackinnon, D. J., 2005, Toronto Star 3.. Dyson R., 2006, “An Insatiable Taste For Gold”, thisismoney.co.uk, (http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:jke9Y1OgRHcJ:www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html%3Fin_article_id%3D410813%26in_page_id%3D2+gold+bought+by+indians&hl=en&gl=in&ct=clnk&cd=4&client=firefox-a) Accessed on 28 Jan 2007 4. Xinhua, 2005, “World economic growth expected to be solid in 2006”, People’s Daily Online, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200512/14/eng20051214_227929.html Accessed on 28 Jan 2007 5. Seeing Stars: Hollywood Award Ceremonies, 2007 http://www.seeing-stars.com/Awards/OscarNight.shtml 6. Rossi L. C., 2007, “Product Placement And Hypercommercialism Pervade Hollywood Film Industry: But No-One Seems To Notice”, Robin Good. http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2007/01/09/product_placement_and_hypercommercialism_pervade.htm 7. ‘Seeing Stars: Where The Stars Shop”, 2007, Seeing Stars: the ultimate guide to Celebrities and Hollywood, http://www.seeing-stars.com/Shop/Jeweler.shtml Bibliography 1. www.Adiamondisforever.com 2. Marketing refernce 3 3. Advertising, refernce 2. Read More