Advertising Campaign Development for Diamonds

The Challenge

Helping The Diamond Producers Association explore why diamonds might matter to the Millennial generation who are delaying marriage.

Human relationships are some of the greatest, most treasurable wonders in history. It’s amazing how easily (and sometimes not so easily) strangers become family, and how stories change every day. Our client held that same admiration, but wondered what that looks like in today’s day and age, and how they can help. Our Client was looking to better understand the changing nature of intimacy among their Millennial target (18-35), what luxury means to them, and what their key lifestyle and brand influences are, in order to inform communications of their diamond jewelry brand.

The Approach

We began by hosting a 2-day online discussion among 48 ring-shopping and non-ring-shopping millennials to hear about their lifestyles–from relationships, to current social and fashion trends, to their approach to luxury and jewelry. Then we invited 9 of the best respondents to bring along 2 of their friends for an in-home deep dive.

To ensure we were mining every gem from our respondents, we also conducted in-home in-depth-interviews (IDIs) with 3 additional respondents from the online boards. After sifting through our data, we began to piece together the inspiring truth behind Millennial relationships and how diamonds fit into their lives. In each stage, we thoroughly explored the dynamics of modern-day love, intimacy, and material goods with Millennials in traditional and non-traditional relationships.

The Impact

Our Insights on Millennial values, how they approach relationships, and their engagement with the luxury category helped generate a fresh new positioning, “Real is rare” that addressed millennial pushback on inauthenticity. The “Real is rare” positioning was featured in Forbes and AdAge.