The four most valuable words in the world
An extract from Write Now!
Sometimes a nudge is so successful, and lasts for such a long time, that the whole world forgets it’s being influenced.
What do you think about when you think about diamonds?
They are an ancient symbol of eternal love. They are expensive to produce, so they must be a high value investment. They represent glamour, wealth and long-term commitment. They’re a girl’s best friend. Without them, an engagement seems incomplete and somehow hollow.
Right?
Wrong.
Diamonds are stones. They’re good for industrial drilling and, with a heap of polishing and cutting and the right light, they sparkle. It’s strange that buying them is proof of the depth of a lover’s passion, rather than their gullibility. The world has been conned into paying a fortune for a shiny illusion.
Before 1870, diamonds were rare treasures. They had only been found in Indian riverbeds and deep in the jungles of Latin America. But a huge find in South Africa yielded tons of the things. Investors and miners knew that a sudden glut of diamonds would destroy prices. So, they joined forces to create what would eventually become De Beers Consolidated Mines, one of the most powerful – and most lucrative – monopolies the earth has ever seen.
De Beers has always been a skilful teller of tales. When the market for diamonds collapsed during the Great Depression, De Beers launched a campaign that explicitly connected the price of an engagement ring with the buyer’s salary. The ads suggested that one month’s salary was an ideal spend. At this time over 90% of rings were bought by men, though nearly all the ads were, of course, placed in women’s magazines.
De Beers controlled the world’s supply of diamonds. Their strategy was to change how we thought and felt about their not-particularly-precious gems. Their ad agency, N.W. Ayer, designed a series of adverts featuring diamonds next to works of art by Picasso and Dali. These adverts ran in high class magazines (Fortune, Vogue, The New Yorker) where the power of association turned diamonds into a symbol of sophistication. Buying them was akin to buying a famous work of art.
A new narrative had been created by De Beers’ PR department. They planted stories in the press about couples separated by war or bad luck whose love was commemorated in their rings. Readers believed that diamonds had been an essential element of an engagement since time immemorial, even though the tradition had been dreamt up in a Manhattan boardroom.
A diamond is forever.
It’s copywriter Frances Gerety who’s responsible for our perception of diamonds. Her four words, inscribed next to a picture of a couple on honeymoon, has become the most famous advertising slogan of all time. Diamonds are now symbolic of ever-lasting love and Gerety’s four words have created billions and billions of dollars in sales. Sure, the slogan has created guilt, envy and immeasurable emotional stress over the last seventy years, but think about the shareholder returns!
And there’s a second meaning to forever. No-one should ever sell their diamond. Not only would it be a betrayal of love, but it would destroy the illusion that these gemstones possess huge intrinsic value. A brutal ten minutes of negotiation in any downtown second-hand jewellery shop will teach you just how much mark-up is made when love has gone.
The diamond engagement ring is de rigueur virtually worldwide, and the diamond by far the precious gemstone of choice
- Advertising Age-Slogan of the Century Award, 1999