If this new campaign proves successful

Hearing that De Beers is once again included in the species marketing - with reservations that we understand, - industry writer Peggy Jo Donahue (Peggy Jo Donahue) posted the following entry on Facebook:

Remember, in June, I told you - friends from the jewelry industry - about my young friend from the industry who smoked a cigarette on the street with Philippe Mellier, CEO of De Beers, just before the gala dinner Jewelers for Children (Jewelers for Children) in Las Vegas? She did not know who she was talking to, and he only told her that he "works for De Beers".

She strongly resented the fact that the lack of species marketing by De Beers undermined the sales of diamonds in the United States! She realized who he was only later, when he got up to accept his award as an honorable guest at dinner ...

Mellier seems to have understood what's what, either from the words of this woman, with whom he smoked, or by another way. It's no secret that the termination of De Beers' participation in type marketing left a huge void in our industry. Although it tried to fill it with different schemes - from the Supplier of Choice to the Forevermark brand - nothing compares to its past coverage or effectiveness campaigns.

Taking into account that the market needs adrenaline rush, De Beers plans to conduct a campaign for specific advertising in this festive season - in addition to the planned advertisement Forevermark - is unexpected and welcome. (The latest campaign for specific advertising, conducted by De Beers, was the 2008 campaign "Fewer, better things", launched after the financial crisis.

As even its architect admits, this hastily developed campaign is not a species, strictly speaking; To modern options is a small but noticeable campaign "Happy Holiday from Forevermark" (Happy holidays from Forevermark). It is a strange hybrid, to which the leaders of De Beers could hardly define. Paul Rowley, the sales manager, called it "a kind of species [marketing]." A spokesman for the company David Johnson (David Johnson) stressed that this was not "type marketing in the traditional sense of the word." I call it "species" with reservations.

In general, the new campaign is rooted in the past. Its template is the calling for action campaign "Seize the Day", held by De Beers during each holiday. The advertising agency JWT, with whom she worked for a long time and who created original advertisements, is also engaged in this campaign. Even the language of the public relations service is the same. This week, Colby Shergalis, vice president of marketing for Forevermark, said to me: "We are going to" tax "customers this season." In 2003, a representative of JWT said almost the same thing: "We want to" impose "male buyers."

Of course, De Beers really could "impose" on all sides of customers when she spent $ 200 million annually on the promotion of diamonds. Currently, Rowley says that the aggregate annual budget for these two campaigns (Forevermark and specific advertising) will be about half of that amount: $ 100 million.

Attentive readers will notice that the management of De Beers, including the chief executive officer and director of finance, used to say that the company spends $ 100 million annually on Forevermark marketing. This figure, as it turns out, is also indicated with reservations. "All the costs of Forevermark's business unit are marketing costs because this is the focus of this business unit and it does it," Johnson said. "But not all this money goes to purely marketing activities aimed at the consumer. $ 100 million, which we [now] are talking about, including our total spending for the full year 2015 on all our diverse purely marketing/advertising activities aimed at the consumer. "

Despite all these reservations, this campaign is a positive thing, if we did not need to participate in it. As the De Beers management has repeatedly stated, now that the company sells only about 40 percent of the world's diamond volume, it should not bear the burden of advertising for the entire industry. It makes sense.

If this new campaign proves successful, Rowley suggests that the newly formed Diamond Producers Association (DPA) take over. But there were a lot of conflicting reports about what the DPA will be doing, taking into account its limited budget, although just today the president of ALROSA Andrey Zharkov urged her to participate in the kind of marketing. In any case, we can not expect that it will have advertising costs of $ 200 million, as De Beers had in the past.

There is the biggest problem: money. Previous attempts to conduct type marketing failed, as soon as participants understood the amount of costs. In order to effectively reach the American consumer, it is necessary to spend tens of millions. Regardless of this, the fact that De Beers deals with advertising advertising about 15 years after she threw off the mantle of the guardian of the industry shows that the need for it remains. Recently, the Indian dealer Hemant Shah (Hemant Shah) spoke, and he suggested that each company should allocate 1 percent of the sales to the general fund. This is a good idea. DPA seems to be a promising organization, but we can not expect only diamond manufacturers to promote the product.

http://www.jckonline.com/blogs/cutting-remarks/2015/09/03/de-beers-invests-in-generic-advertising-asterisk