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Editorial: Yeah, Because It Works! | December 03, 2014 (0 comments)
New York, NY—Jewelry bashing is nothing new. How many times have we seen/read/heard someone go off on diamond engagement rings, claiming it’s nothing more than a racket invented by De Beers in 1946?
The first known diamond engagement ring was presented by Archduke Maximillan of Austria to Mary of Burgundy in 1477. So obviously it’s not a 20th century gimmick invented by De Beers (even if they did have a lot to do with promoting the idea among the masses.)
Fact is, sentiment sells, especially jewelry. And so does a bargain. That’s why so much mass-market jewelry advertising is price-driven. The high end of the industry doesn’t like it but the merchants who advertise that way keep doing it for one reason: it works.
It works on clothes, it works on gadgets, it works on mattresses, it works on TV sets, it works on cars, and it works on jewelry. Usually the product never was meant to sell for more than the advertised price. The retailer knows it and maybe on some level even the consumer knows it too. But like we learned in high school literature class, there’s such a thing as “willing suspension of disbelief,” and clearly consumers are willing. Hence, the screaming discount ads keep coming.
The other thing that sells jewelry is sentiment. It’s why even six-year-olds know the “Every Kiss Begins With Kay” jingle, and why promoting fine jewelry as a female self-purchase fashion accessory has been such an uphill battle: because we’ve sold it as a gift of love for so long that both jewelers and consumers still have trouble seeing it as anything else.
Using sentiment to sell jewelry may be nothing new to us, but in a recent blog on Mediapost.com, renowned advertising expert and columnist Bob Garfield (a very well known name in ad circles) went off on Jane Seymour’s “Open Hearts” commercial for Kay Jewelers. He writes as though sappy sentiment is some kind of groundbreaking idea for selling jewelry, and one he doesn’t like.
Maybe he doesn’t like jewelry. Or maybe he idolizes Jane Seymour from her “Dr. Quinn” days and can’t stand that she is now designing and promoting jewelry (or dancing with stars). Whatever his issue, he’s not very happy about this and has taken great pains to let the ad world know.
“Open your heart? More like open your wallet!” he barks. Well, yeah. That’s ultimately what the point is, isn’t it? After all, Sterling/Kay isn’t paying Seymour to decorate its showcases, it’s partnering with her to create jewelry that people can relate to and want to buy.
Garfield takes particular exception to what he considers an implied suggestion that a purchase of Open Hearts jewelry is going to result in a donation to charity, but unless I’m missing something, the commercial he’s bashing never makes any implication of the sort. It’s tug-at-the-heart sentimentality, plain and simple.
One would think a seasoned ad man would get that concept.
Why? Because it works. And it always has.
Top image: Jane Seymour with her Open Hearts jewelry at her Open Hearts Foundation. Image, Huffington Post.