Put a Ring on it
When, where & how the engagement ring was introduced as the perfect gesture to seel mariage vows
"Most impressively, De Beers managed demand as well as supply. Harry Oppenheimer, the son of the founder of De Beers, hired the New York-based advertising firm N.W. Ayer in 1938 to improve the perception of diamonds in the country, where the custom of giving diamond engagement rings had been slowly gaining popularity for years but where the diamonds sold were getting smaller and of lower quality. This was despite the effects of the Depression and the rumblings of war.
Meanwhile, the price of diamonds was falling around the world. The folks at Ayer set out to persuade young men that diamonds (and only diamonds) were synonymous with romance, and that the measure of a man’s love (and even his personal and professional success) was directly proportional to the size and quality of the diamond he purchased. Young women, in turn, had to be convinced that courtship concluded, invariably, in a diamond.
Diamond prices were decreasing globally at the same time. The people at Ayer set out to convince young men that diamonds—and only diamonds—were synonymous with romance and that a man's ability to love—and even to achieve success in his personal and professional life—was directly correlated with the size and quality of the diamond he bought. In turn, young women needed to be persuaded that courting always ended with a diamond.
Ayer insinuated these messages into the nooks and crannies of popular culture. It marketed an idea, not a diamond or brand:
Movie idols, the paragons of romance for the mass audience, would be given diamonds to use as their symbols of indestructible love. In addition, the agency suggested offering stories and society photographs to selected magazines and newspapers which would reinforce the link between diamonds and romance. Stories would stress the size of diamonds that celebrities presented to their loved ones, and photographs would conspicuously show the glittering stone on the hand of a well-known woman. Fashion designers would talk on radio programs about the “trend towards diamonds” that Ayer planned to start …
In its 1947 strategy plan, the advertising agency … outlined a subtle program that included arranging for lecturers to visit high schools across the country. “All of these lectures revolve around the diamond engagement ring, and are reaching thousands of girls in their assemblies, classes and informal meetings in our leading educational institutions,” the agency explained in a memorandum to De Beers. The agency had organized, in 1946, a weekly service called “Hollywood Personalities,” which provided 125 leading newspapers with descriptions of the diamonds worn by movie stars … In 1947, the agency commissioned a series of portraits of “engaged socialites.” The idea was to create prestigious “role models” for the poorer middle-class wage-earners. The advertising agency explained, in its 1948 strategy paper, “We spread the word of diamonds worn by stars of screen and stage, by wives and daughters of political leaders, by any woman who can make the grocer’s wife and the mechanic’s sweetheart say ‘I wish I had what she has.’”
The catchphrase ""A Diamond Is Forever"" was created by an Ayer copywriter in the late 1940s, right before my grandfather began looking for his diamond ring. In spite of the fact that diamonds can actually be broken, chipped, discolored, or burned to ash, Epstein claims that the idea of eternity ""fully conveyed the mythical attributes that the advertising firm wished to assign to diamonds."" A diamond that lasts a lifetime offers never-ending love and affection. However, an eternal diamond is one that is never resold. Diamond prices fluctuate as a result of resold diamonds (and it's excruciatingly difficult to resale them, as Epstein's piece explains), which erodes public belief in the underlying value of diamonds. Diamonds that are left to future generations or stored in safe deposit boxes don't.
De Beers' wholesale diamond sales in the US grew from $23 million to $2.1 billion between 1939 and 1979. The business' annual advertising spend increased from $200,000 to $10 million during those four decades.
De Beers and its marketers shown exceptional flexibility in shaping public image. In an effort to revive romanticism later in a marriage when the U.S. engagement market appeared to have peaked, a new campaign emphasized giving a second diamond as a gift. People were convinced that the size of diamonds (as opposed to their quality, color, and cut, or the simple gesture of buying a diamond in the first place) didn't mean much after all when little Soviet diamonds hit the market. (Some gambles failed, such as the 1980s fiasco with diamond rings for males.)
And when De Beers decided to go global in the middle of the 1960s, it didn't hesitate to join countries like Japan, where a long-standing custom of arranged weddings allowed little room for premarital love, much less diamond engagement rings. According to Epstein, De Beers aggressively promoted diamond rings as symbols of ""new Western values"" in Japan. Less than 5% of Japanese women engaged at the start of the campaign in 1967 had diamond engagement rings. That percentage had increased to 60% by 1981, and Japan had overtaken the United States as the second-largest market for diamond engagement rings. In Japan, whose marriage tradition had endured feudal changes, world wars, industrialisation, and even the American occupation, De Beers conjured up ""a billion-dollar-a-year diamond market."""