The Manipulative Diamond Industry

I watched a video about the history of engagement rings in America. The video talks about how before the 20th century, people just got married, and while engagement rings and things similar had been used in the past, it wasn’t a common custom. In 1938 the De Beers diamond corporation launched ad campaigns saying that giving women diamonds was the best way to show his love for her, and that the size and price of the diamond reflected on him. The campaigning was successful in creating an american tradition in marriage, as well as our feelings about diamonds. Even the rule of how you should by a diamond worth two months salary was arbitrarily invented by De Beers. The video goes deeper into the value of diamond jewelry by saying that “diamonds are intrinsically worthless”. The video further explains that diamonds aren’t actually that rare, and that they are seen as so is because De Beers has a monopoly on diamond mining, and artificially limit the quantity of diamonds. The thing that makes this information particularly interesting to me, is how marketing and ads are used to manipulate consumer interest and artificially create demand for the product. Theoretically, without the social engineering done by the De Beers company, diamonds would be much less valuable, and much more common in jewelry. The total control that De Beers has on the diamond industry,and the ability to regulate them as they wish, which they utilize by withholding them, makes them more exclusive and therefore more valuable. That is similar to what the Supreme does with their t-shirts. By not creating/releasing as much of the products, they are able to sell them for much more than they otherwise would if they had competitors. If they had to compete for customers, they’d be forced to lower prices in order for a customer to see it as a worthwhile purchase.However, De Beers doesn’t have to deal with this issue. What else does Supreme and diamonds have in common? Branding. Along with exclusivity raising market value, through marketing,a product can be made more appealing when associated with certain ideas or values. Supreme’s brand is that of cool, rich, and interesting, associated with skate culture and a particular type of person. Diamonds, while marketed for everyone, have associations with wealth, elegance, and class on their own, and when set into rings, as romantic. This exclusivity used in branding is what made things like cadillacs and rolexes symbols of wealth. Already, De Beers had several attributes that made them valuable and marketable, however, for many people outside the upper class, the cost outweighed the benefit for diamonds. That’s when Debeers did something ingenious: they engineered a whole engagement custom, just for the purpose of selling more rocks. Somehow, they were able to brainwash everybody into thinking giving someone a ring was an obligatory custom, and furthermore make it a norm that went for generations, and remains widespread today. This displays how the economics of how society/individuals create a demand, and products supply it, but how companies can literally impact society to manufacture a demand. This idea gives a different perspective on how we look at economics. As American capitalism and consumerism evolves, I wonder how our culture will be shaped by it, and what the consequences will be.


MLA CITING:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5kWu1ifBGU