Until WorldWar 2 only 10% wore diamond engagement rings. Today that figure is 84%.

The insane story of how one company pulled off one of the greatest marketing campaigns the world has ever seen

Diamonds were first unearthed in India way back in 4th century BC. 💎

Not much occurred until the 1800's when European women started showcasing them at high society gatherings.

However, all this changed in the mid-1800s when diamonds were found in South Africa. One of the early mines ended up being obtained by a twenty-something British youngster called Cecil Rhodes.

Cecil had joined the diamonds trade after being sent to South Africa as an adolescent due to frail condition. Now, Cecil Rhodes ended up getting into politics and became prime minister aged 37.
It was his nefarious actions here that he's most recalled by - including pushing black people from their lands, prohibiting them from elections and taking part in several brutal conflicts.
After years of poor wellness in his 40's, he created the world’s first scholarship at Oxford University where a highly controversial statue of him remains to this day.

Before his political career as a mid twenty something, he managed to secure funding from the Rothschild family and founded De Beers which he named after an early mine acquisition. Through De Beers, he aggressively bought up huge amounts of mines and even entered into a diamond syndicate (cartel).

The cartel formally agreed to create a monopoly by controlling supply and maintaining diamond prices high. This went on for two decades until De Beers and the diamond cartel had a huge monopoly across the whole supply chain.

The value and allure of diamonds started to ramp up.

One of the owners (Oppenheimer) ended up being appointed a local agent for the Cartel, grew his business exponentially and ended up absorbing De Beers into his operations. He carried on using De Beers as the name and ran the business under the same ethos as Rhodes.

For example when independent producers refused to join the single-channel monopoly, De Beers flooded the market with diamonds similar to the ones the producers made, depressing the price and undermining returns for the resistant producers.

Whereas in times of natural price reductions (such as the Great Depression), De Beers bought diamonds up to constrict supply and keep the value high.

There were even accusations of withholding industrial diamonds for use in the US war effort. It was during this time that needing to boost demand, De Beers got smart with marketing.

They commissioned a copywriter who coined the iconic phrase 'A diamond is forever'.
The slogan is rumoured to have inspired the James Bond book, film and song of the same name cementing itself into popular culture.

But they didn't stop there.

De Beers then began running stories in the press of celebrities wearing diamonds & celebrities that proposed with diamond rings. Successfully creating the aspirational idea of one day being proposed to with a diamond ring.

They didn't stop there either.
De Beers then sent speakers to High Schools all over America to give girls lectures on why they should insist on a diamond engagement ring.

Rumoured to now be spending $10 million a year on advertising this boosted business like never before - US diamond sales between 1938 and 1979 exploded from $23 million to $2.1 billion.
Next they began running the idea that the value of an engagement ring had to be two months salary. 'A small price to pay' they said for 'something that lasts forever'.

If you spread 2 months' salary over an infinite amount of time - It sounds like a bargain.

Later De Beers would go on to create the 'eternity ring', 'trilogy ring' and more recently a 'right hand ring' (to be purchased by women as a gift to themselves of their independence).

During this time they realised they could roll this campaign out into other countries.
Take Japan where less than 5% of women received a diamond engagement ring in the 1990s. After deploying the De Beers marketing machine, that figure now sits at 77%.

Or more recently China, where the practice basically didn't exist in the 1990s, compared to today, where 30% of brides-to-be wear diamond engagement rings.
That takes us to now, where De Beers pulled in $31 billion in revenue through 2020. And therein lies the story of one of the greatest marketing heists ever pulled on man.