By Dimitris Kolias,
What is the first picture that comes to mind when talking about engagement rings? Is it a diamond? If so, have you ever wondered when this tradition started? Some may think that proposing with a diamond is just something we do, a small ritual we carry through generations. Surprisingly that is incorrect, even though diamonds have been known to us for thousands of years, it was not until relatively recently that we started using them as a way of saying “will you marry me?”. In the end, it all boils down to a single marketing campaign in the late 40s and the company which, at the time, controlled almost the entire global supply of diamonds. To give some context first, let us talk a bit about the history of diamonds in general.
As previously mentioned, diamonds were known to us since very early antiquity. The first recorded use of diamonds was around 2500 BC in China, where they were used to polish ceremonial tools. This is not surprising, since they are after all the hardest material in nature. But even though diamonds were present in China, they were not nearly as abundant as they were in India. India was the place where diamonds came to mean wealth and royalty. After Alexander the Great’s campaigns that meaning, along with them, was transferred for the first time to, what is today, Europe. The Europeans’ fascination with diamonds kept growing through the centuries and was amplified each time a new mining location was found, first in Brazil and then in 1867 in Africa. In South Africa specifically, a mining company named De Beers would come to dominate the scene.
This company would quickly gain control of all of South Africa’s diamond production and then most of the world’s, by the turn of the twentieth century they owned almost 90% of the global supply. That allowed them, for most of the previous century, to artificially raise the price of diamonds whenever people began to lose interest by lowering said supply to pump up demand, but that is a different story. By the 1940s they faced a different issue, as the demand for diamonds was at an all-time low, due to the Great Depression and World War 2, and that needed correction. So, in 1947 they began a marketing campaign led by the advertising agency NW Ayer.
This campaign led by the slogan “a diamond is forever” would prove to be what many consider the most successful marketing campaign of all time. And honestly, I tend to agree with them, after all in less than a century they overhauled the way we think about matrimony, all to sell a shiny rock. Less than two years after the beginning of the campaign their marketing would already be a part of pop culture. In 1949 Marylin Monroe would debut her, now-famous, song “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” in a Broadway production. Years later in 1971, the last James Bond film featuring Sean Connery would be titled Diamonds are forever, cementing the now well-known slogan even more.
Today, De Beers does not control all of the world’s diamond supply, more like 30%, but an ad campaign they started more than fifty years ago is still going strong. In the end, they successfully persuaded our entire species that diamonds, out of all the other precious and semi-precious gems are, the ones that should be first considered for an engagement ring. Of course, in the coming decades, this may change once more, since the rise in production of artificial or lab-grown diamonds is already to a point where they are indistinguishable from the natural ones, or it may even amplify our fascination with these shiny, well-structured minerals.
References
- Diamond engagement ring. luxuryacademy.co.uk. Available here
- 1948: De Beers’ ‘A diamond is forever’ campaign invents the modern-day engagement ring. thedrum.com. Available here
- Worldwide sales of polished diamonds. statista.com. Available here
