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Exclusive Video: Forevermark Announces New National Ad Campaign; Sightholder Changes Coming | June 04, 2014 (0 comments)
Las Vegas, NV—Before a packed ballroom at the Four Seasons Hotel here, executives from the De Beers Group of Companies announced the next stage of initiatives to promote its Forevermark branded diamonds.
Charles Stanley, president of Forevermark USA, welcomed the audience of retailers and industry dignitaries, and explained the market dynamics behind Forevermark’s branding efforts.
“Change is slow until it’s not. As you know, diamond margins have been driven way down. The Internet has driven a wedge into the business, [dividing it] between those who try to match it with volume, grading, and soft grading, and those who try to differentiate themselves.” De Beers, he added, has a history of creating emotion.
De Beers CEO Philippe Mellier next took the stage to underscore the miner’s commitment to the diamond industry.
“The diamond dream is our DNA, and we will continue to safely and sustainably support it,” he said. He outlined three initiatives De Beers is taking to ensure adequate supply continues:
- Continued investment in Botswana as a country and Debswana, the joint venture between De Beers and the government of Botswana, to extend the life of the massive Jwaneng mine, the biggest open cast mine in the world. Together with Botswana, De Beers has invested US $3 billion to extract an estimated $15 billion worth of diamonds at the bottom of the pit. The mine suffered a partial collapse recently; that has been repaired and additional digging has begun.
- De Beers is investing 20 billion Rand ($2 billion US) to go underground at its Venetia mine in the Limpopo region of South Africa. That will extend the life of the mine beyond 2040. Mellier says De Beers expects to begin production of this part by 2021.
- Development of the Gacho Kue mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The mine is expected to produce approximately 4.5 billion carats per year, with a lifespan of about 11 years.
All told, said Mellier, De Beers is confident of its diamond production for the next 20 to 40 years. He also addressed the firm’s efforts in biodiversity and environmental conservation, such as having reintroduced rhinoceros to the area near the Orapa mine in Botswana.
De Beers' Jwaneng mine in Botswana is the richest diamond mine by value in the world, and also the world's largest open-cast mine.
He also addressed the corporate move of De Beers from London to Botswana as the biggest transfer of wealth from the northern to southern hemisphere, and briefly touched on plans to revamp the sightholder allocation process again. The sightholder system will remain in place, he said, but the allocation process will change radically with the next contract, including the welcome end of the complex CPQ process. Sightholders will have new financial criteria to meet (a lower debt-to-sale ratio), he said, but will also have greater flexibility from category to category.
Mellier briefly touched on the issue of synthetic diamonds, reassuring the audience that De Beers is at the forefront of technology to make them—“for industrial use only!” he reassured jewelers—and as such, is able to detect them no matter what methods are used to create them.
He then addressed the Forevermark brand, which, with retail sales of $500 million USD and 40% year-on-year growth since its inception, he again reassured the audience is a major strategic priority for the De Beers Group. The brand is in 380 leading jewelry doors in the United States and Canada, and worldwide has more than 1300 doors—beating out Tiffany six-fold.
Charles Stanley and Forevermark CEO Stephen Lussier introduced the new Promise campaign, which will break this fall in the United States. A preview of unedited footage for the commercial was shown.
“Promises are powerful, precious, and eternal,” he said. But too often there’s tension between what people aspire to vs. everyday life, where promises can be meaningless, disposable, and breakable. The new campaign will reinforce the beauty of promises as precious and eternal, and tie it into the Forevermark promise of diamonds that are beautiful, rare, and responsibly sourced. It will focus on the diamond itself and what makes a Forevermark diamond special and link it to consumer emotion.
In an exclusive interview and video session with The Centurion, Forevermark US president Charles Stanley offered more details of the Promise campaign strategy. The campaign will of course be multi-media, encompassing national TV and print buys, as well as a digital element, geotargeting, online sponsorships, and paid search. Social media will be used within the brand’s public relations efforts, not as a paid vehicle, he said.
While he declined to offer numbers, Stanley said the TV buy will be equal in weight or bigger than last year. Last year’s campaign reached 95% of the target audience nine times, and drove brand awareness up from the low 30s to 42%, he said.
“I’m confident our partners will be happy with it,” he told The Centurion.
“To fully communicate the power of emotion, you need some video,” he said. Originally, Forevermark was focused solely on digital video as a more targeted approach than the mass reach of TV. But after retail partners expressed dismay, TV became a key component of the brand’s marketing, beginning with a heavy buy for its “Center of My Universe” campaign.
This year’s Promise campaign will bow in September in print and in November and December on television. Product focus will be broader than the Center of My Universe, which focused specifically on the halo setting. Promise will support a wider range of product, including round solitaires, three-stone, diamond wedding bands, diamond tennis bracelets, and fancy yellows, said Stanley.
“We want consumers to aspire to Forevermark diamonds in whatever diamond jewelry they want.”
The Center of My Universe campaign isn’t going away, said Stanley. While it won’t be the focus of TV, it will be online and the slogan will remain. Partners who want to use it as part of their co-op plans may do so.
Click here to watch an exclusive video interview with Charles Stanley.