Alrosa Develops Long-Term Program for Natural-Diamond Promotion

Alrosa’s supervisory board has approved a new project for promoting natural diamonds, which will run through 2030.

The program is aimed at generating sustainable long-term demand for natural diamonds as a category in key global diamond-jewelry markets, the Russian miner said Wednesday. It will consist of generic marketing to stimulate demand, including strengthening the value positioning of mined diamonds as a symbol of authenticity and uniqueness and promoting the sustainability benefits of natural diamonds. The initiative will also support retail and consumer education, advance regulatory protection, and combat unfair practices.

Alrosa will take an omni-channel approach to marketing that covers the entire decision-making chain, from first contact with the consumer in the digital space to professional consultation at the point of sale and the final selection of jewelry, it explained.

“The program focuses on reinforcing the key advantages of natural diamonds: authenticity, natural rarity, uniqueness, emotional significance, and long-term value,” Alrosa said. “These characteristics fundamentally distinguish natural diamonds from industrial mass-produced products that attempt to copy them or exploit investments in the category. The communications platform will adapt to the cultural characteristics of priority consumer markets in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union) countries, taking into account the generational characteristics of consumers, primarily Millennials and Generation Z, and developing new consumption occasions, such as personal purchases.”

Alrosa will also educate consumers on how to differentiate natural diamonds from synthetics, through the development of approaches to disclosing information about natural origin, supporting standard terminology distinctions and detection tools. The goal is to ensure fair competition, protect consumers from misleading information, and reinforce the understanding that natural diamonds and synthetics are distinct products with different origins, value propositions, and market logic, Alrosa stated.

The implementation of the new program directly follows a move from the government of Russia that mandates the use of only the word “synthetic” to refer to lab-grown. The new directive calls for weight for non-mined stones to be given only in grams and not carats and prohibits using the word “diamond” as well as the 4Cs characteristics associated with natural diamonds when describing the manmade product.

Image: Polished diamonds. (Alrosa)