Dans les années 30, une brillante campagne publicitaire a poussé les gars, qui n’y avaient jamais pensé auparavant, à acheter une bague de diamants pour leur future épouse. Ils en achètent encore.
Uri Friedman
In 1938, amid the ravages of the Depression and the rumblings of war, Harry Oppenheimer, the De Beers founder’s son, recruited the New York–based ad agency N.W. Ayer to burnish the image of diamonds in the United States, where the practice of giving diamond engagement rings had been unevenly gaining traction for years, but where the diamonds sold were increasingly small and low-quality.
Meanwhile, the price of diamonds was falling around the world. The folks at Ayer set out to persuade young men that diamonds (and only diamonds) were synonymous with romance, and that the measure of a man’s love (and even his personal and professional success) was directly proportional to the size and quality of the diamond he purchased. Young women, in turn, had to be convinced that courtship concluded, invariably, in a diamond.
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Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?
Article de The Atlantic écrit en 1982
An unruly market may undo the work of a giant cartel and of an inspired, decades-long ad campaign