The De Beers Diamond Campaign: How Marketing Made Love Expensive

Not all marketing changes industries; some reshape entire cultures. De Beers didn’t just sell diamonds; they sold the idea that true love requires one. Their campaign “A Diamond is Forever” is one of the most successful (and manipulative) marketing strategies ever launched.

The Background

In the 1930s, diamond sales were flat. De Beers, the world’s dominant diamond supplier, had a problem: people didn’t see diamonds as essential. Enter ad agency N.W. Ayer, tasked with making diamonds synonymous with love and commitment.

The Strategy

  1. Emotional Anchoring: Diamonds weren’t positioned as luxury, but as symbols of eternal love.

  2. Cultural Engineering: Movies, magazines, and celebrities were flooded with diamond imagery. Engagement rings became the standard.

  3. Price Anchoring: The “two months’ salary” rule wasn’t tradition, it was a marketing invention.

  4. Scarcity & Legacy: The phrase “A Diamond is Forever” implied both durability and the idea that you should never resell them, keeping the market artificially scarce.

The Results

  • Engagement rings with diamonds went from niche to expected.

  • By the 1950s, diamond sales had skyrocketed.

  • Even today, nearly 90% of US engagements involve a diamond ring.

Lessons for Businesses

  • Sell the story, not the product. De Beers didn’t market gems; they marketed love and status.

  • Create social norms. If you can position your product as “what people do,” you’ve won.

  • Control resale. By discouraging second-hand markets, they kept demand artificially high.

The Takeaway

De Beers turned a semi-precious rock into a cultural necessity. That’s the power of branding: when your story becomes bigger than your product.

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