De Beers Marketing Strategy

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The De Beers Group of Companies is an international corporation that specializes in diamond exploration, diamond mining, diamond retail, diamond trading and industrial diamond manufacturing sectors. The company is currently active in open-pit, large-scale alluvial, coastal and deep sea mining. It operates in 35 countries and mining takes place in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Canada. Until the start of the 21st century, De Beers effectively had total control over the diamond market as a monopoly.Competition has since dismantled the complete monopoly, though De Beers Group still sells approximately 35%of the world's rough diamond production through its Global Sight-holder Sales and Auction Sales businesses. he company was founded in 1888…show more content…
It has never done much to create jobs or generate skills (beyond standard mining employment) in diamond-producing countries, but it delivered big and stable revenues for their governments. Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania and South Africa are four of Africa's richest and most stable countries, in part because of De Beers. Marketing strategy- It is a known fact that diamonds have the least resale value as their value crashes to half of its cost, the moment it leaves the jewelers store. Still, De Beers was able to maintain a high amount of demand, even during the times of great depression, in the 1930s, where unemployment was at an all-time high, and diamonds were considered a luxury reserved for the few. De Beers then hired N.W Ayer and Son, an eminent advertising agency, for their expertise De Beers chose N.W. Ayer because of their ideas on conducting extensive research on social attitudes about diamonds, and then strategically changing them to appeal to a wider…show more content…
One of the most effective marketing strategies has been the marketing of diamonds as a symbol of love and commitment.A young copywriter working for N. W. Ayer & Son, Frances Gerety (1916–1999), coined the famous advertising slogan, 'A Diamond is Forever', in 1947. In 2000, Advertising Age magazine named 'A Diamond is Forever' the best advertising slogan of the 20th century. Other successful campaigns include the 'eternity ring' (meant as a symbol of continuing affection and appreciation), the 'trilogy ring' (meant to represent the past, present, and future of a relationship) and the 'right hand ring' (meant to be bought and worn by women as a symbol of independence). De Beers ran television advertisements featuring silhouettes of people wearing diamonds, set to the music of 'Palladio' by Karl Jenkins. The campaign, titled Shadows and Lights"' first ran in the spring of 1993. The song would later inspire a compilation album, 'Diamond Music,' released in 1996, which features the 'Palladio' suite. A 2010 commercial for Verizon Wireless parodied the De Beers spots. Thus, N.W. Ayer's game plan was to "create a situation where almost every person pledging marriage feels compelled to acquire a diamond engagement

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