De Beers: Diamonds Are a Recession's Best Friend

In a marketing gambit more dazzling than their product, De Beers touts diamonds as the cure for evil consumerism.

Unlike Prada, Vuitton, Hermes and other luxury marketers who are hawking their wares conventionally this Christmas season, De Beers isn't pretending it's indulgence-as-usual.

Instead, they are acting more boldly and directly than Hank Paulson: They are making the case that even though Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers have disappeared—and the Big Three and Citigroup hover on the edge of vanishing—a diamond is forever.

But their fiendishly clever psychology goes even deeper: De Beers is actually using grim times to re-position the purchase of a diamond bauble as not just a gift, but a philosophical and ethical declaration.

"Here's to Less" one ad is cheerily but somewhat ominously headlined. The copy sounds more like an ad for a zen retreat than for a girl's best friend: "Our lives are filled with things. We're overwhelmed by possessions we own but do not treasure. Stuff we buy but never love.”

The implicit message: If more people bought diamonds instead of credit-default swaps, we’d be just fine now.

Buy a diamond, De Beers is saying, and you are recognizing what is truly valuable in life—and rejecting the superficial consumerism that has brought the world’s mightiest economy to its knees. This is a wickedly clever kung-fu move for the new Obama-ready marketplace: Monroe becomes Thoreau.

Think about the incredible co-option that’s going on here. Diamonds are ultimate artifact of capitalism and consumerism—inherently neutral objects whose value depends on the manipulation of scarcity and the aggressive promotion of cultural symbolism through Jacob the Jeweler and Harry Winston the Jeweler.

Yet here we have the world’s leading diamond firm instructing us in the evils of consumerism and arrogating for itself a higher plane of spiritual meaning. Note as well their wily use of the word "stuff"—a bit of vernacular so the message doesn't get too grandiloquent. The hypocrisy dazzles more than the product.