Nigeria Content Online

The
campaign slogan, ‘a diamond is forever’ is credited to American
copywriter Frances Gerety. It has been rated as the most successful
advertising slogan of the twentieth century. The story is that she was
dog-tired and at the end of her tether with a looming deadline in 1947
to create a new allure for the De Beers product.

Of course the stamp of that concept has become
indelible and even I as a teenager remember the slew of ads over the
decades that grew from that association of diamonds and romance and the
path to a woman’s heart, well, or thereabouts.

Tell her you love her all over again, was the tag line for the anniversary ring, tenth, I think it was.

There was also the eternity ring, which rhymed nicely with the idea of timelessness,

or the trilogy ring, integrating past present and
future that tied in nicely with yet another related concept, that of
undying love, or material value as the case may be.

That idea of forever though was a carefully worked
one tied down by the nuts and bolts of another enduring business
concept – cartels, controlling supply to control price, hello OPEC.

De Beers was founded by Cecil Rhodes to who is
attributed the quotation: “Our only risk is the sudden discovery of new
mines which human nature will work recklessly to the detriment of us
all.” By the time competition came along with the discovery of the
Culinan Mine whose owner refused to join the De Beers cartel the idea
had become a raison d’etre of the industry and Ernest Oppenheimer said
in 1910: “Common sense tells us hat the only way to increase the value
of diamonds is to make them scarce, that is to reduce production…”
Yes life would be drab without gorgeous artifacts to symbolise our
feelings and translate our values into things we can touch taste, wear,
enjoy and derive pleasure and self -affirmation from.

Giving them a price that places them above the
reach of others and establishes a hierarchy of values is all part of
creating that sense of luxury and “set apartness” from a bunch of
stones that may or may not be rare. It is a miracle of marketing that
as society changes has come to mean different things.

Witness the concept of blood diamonds that in the
context of the brutal war in Sierra Leone has come a long and some
might say circuitous way from the gleam it formed in Cecil Rhode’s eye.
Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

But talk about looking through a glass darkly, the
idea of the precious stone as a symbol of love and fidelity was given a
slightly different perspective by the song Diamonds are a girls best
friend. It was written by Jule Slyne and Leo Robins and made famous by
Marilyn Monroe who sang it in the movie Gentlemen prefer blondes which
was based on the book of the same name by Anita Loos. ‘Men grow cold as
girls grow old’, the lyrics go and the advantage of those sparkly
stones is that their value is always bankable.

Love may die, but those diamonds will go on… And
you can walk way with them being as they are small and amenable to
being secreted away. So even if you have to give up the flat, car and
eventually dump the gucci-pucci-uiton bag, (that equivalent of a car
down payment), as it goes out of fashion, you can always turn the
diamonds into cash. De Beers in 2001 established a joint venture with
Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy, luxury brands coming together, a move that
makes complete sense.

Louis Vuitton designed the case to hold another
quality brand, the all gold World Cup that was launched at the recently
concluded World Cup tournament in South Africa.

When they are first dug up from the ground those
million dollar gems do look like dirty stones, but cleaned, smoothed,
buffed, polished and cut they sparkle with a thousand points of light.

Fact is that even a rough diamond, man that is,
can work his way to affording those gifts that when displayed on the
woman he loves, announce to the world the strength of his hand and the
power of his magnetism. The game is the same world over, whether it
comes from the bright red lips of Marilyn Monroe or from Dede with his
flashy SUV in Suru City.

A rock on her finger will inspire comparisons with
a diamond in the rough, and hidden attributes that only she can enjoy;
or not.