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1. Lightbox was a strategy
When it came to discussing the impact of De Beers’ Lightbox lab-grown diamond brand, which closed in May, Rapaport Group executive chairman Martin Rapaport didn’t pull any punches: “I’m a jeweler, and I’ve been screwed by these synthetic diamonds that you also screwed around with. What are you going to do for me?”
De Beers CEO Al Cook’s reply: “We shut down Lightbox…. Job done. At a wholesale level, you can [now] buy a hundred, a thousand lab-grown diamonds for the price of one natural diamond.”
De Beers now plans to redirect its lab-grown capabilities away from jewelry toward industrial and medical uses, Cook said. “We can take all those scientists who are making lab-grown diamonds for jewelry and get these amazing PhD-level people to focus on creating synthetic diamonds to make the world a better place.”
2. Investment in marketing is coming
Cook used the Rapaport Breakfast to announce that De Beers was preparing an unbranded natural-diamond marketing campaign with the highest budget in over a decade. “We in De Beers are restarting our category marketing…because it’s in our hands to create the demand,” he said, adding that a core part of the strategy would be a revival of the “A Diamond Is Forever” campaign. “You’re going to see a whole round of wonderful marketing for diamonds.”
The goal? To reignite desire. “It’s about the beauty of the diamond, the beauty of the jewelry, and the beauty of the journey that the diamond has been on,” said Cook.
3. Diamonds are expensive. Get over it
The discussion kept circling back to what sets natural diamonds apart: rarity and romance. “The diamonds that we see around this room, they’re more than a billion years old,” said Cook. “Compare that to something created in a factory in China three weeks ago. There’s no comparison.”
Rapaport expanded on the themes of emotional value and “exponential scarcity” in a bid to persuade the room that jewelers shouldn’t shy away from the cost of natural diamonds; rather, he said, they should use it to reinforce the messaging that diamond jewelry is for truly special occasions, such as engagements.
“Natural diamonds are not for people who want to save money,” Rapaport declared. “Natural diamonds are for people who want to spend money.”
4. Don’t wait for customers to ask about origin
Cook called on jewelers to stop waiting for customers to ask about provenance, and start leading with it. “We need to be able to tell the story and demonstrate to the customer that their diamond is from an ethical country.”
Consumers already care deeply about the origins of their food and fashion, he pointed out — “Where’s my meat from? Where’s my coffee from? Where’s the cotton in my shirt from?” — yet they rarely apply the same scrutiny to jewelry. “We need to work with them so they become curious. They deserve to know where their diamonds are from.”
Cook signposted the new branding proposition De Beers had announced earlier at JCK — Ombré Desert Diamonds — as one such storytelling strategy. The marketing around this curated collection of cream-, champagne- and brown-colored diamonds highlights their ethical provenance by celebrating the deserts in Botswana and Namibia, their countries of origin.
5. Success comes down to ‘the last 18 inches’
Earlier in his presentation, before Cook joined him on stage, Rapaport brought the room back to basics: “Everything here depends on the last 18 inches…the sales counter.” And Cook agreed that those on the front lines would ultimately be the ones driving success.
“We need to work together to make sure we can tell the stories of diamonds,” said the De Beers CEO, emphasizing the importance of training and cross-industry collaboration. “We’ve trained thousands and thousands of Signet front-line staff. In India, we’ve trained 20,000 store workers, representatives of the diamond industry there. What we really need to do is work with all of you.”
Main image: Al Cook (left) and Martin Rapaport in conversation at the Rapaport Breakfast. (Rapaport)
