
Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? (1982) - mlthoughts2018
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/
======
enriquto
This is a fascinating account of a very large-scale advertisement campaign
that succeeded in radically changing the views of millions of people over a
few years.

I wonder what kind of such campaigns are going on today, changing our thoughts
without us noticing.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Have you ever read manufacturing consent?

Household products like soap and flour used to be generic and without brands.
Brand names were invented to differentiate identical products. The entire
history of marketing in the 20th century is appealing to people’s emotions
with emotional oversimplifications. Their goal is to creat an uninformed,
irrational consumer.

There was a huge campaign against man made global warming, and its worked, a
significant amount of people believe its a hoax.

Many people thought Iraq was behind 9/11, or supported Al Queda.

Propaganda is all around us, and it works!

~~~
SilasX
Wait, what? Branding is an important solution to the problem of validating
product quality, as it attaches consequences to selling an inferior product,
and thus saves on search costs.

Yes, it's possible to waste too much money on branding, but the existence of
brands, which creates incentive for consistent quality and attributes of a
product, is not a bad thing in itself, even for commodity goods like flour and
soap.

IIRC, one of the old problems with general/convenience stores was having to
ask around about which products are good, and branding has mostly solved that.

(To answer the obvious objection: yes, regulation is another way to ensure
consistent quality, but that has its ups and downs, like being slow to catch
up with changing consumer preferences.)

~~~
lotyrin
You absolutely can still grade commodities. A discerning distributor who has
discerning retailers who have discerning consumers has plenty of incentives
not to comingle inferior material into his shipments.

The fact that consumers aren't very discerning is exactly created by brands --
they have learned to discern based on identity instead of by quality, because
brand recognition is less effort than material inspection.

Additionally, a brand certainly does not provide the attachment to consequence
that you claim, once a brand has consumers' loyalty and a sizable market share
it can adjust quality with relative impunity.

~~~
merpnderp
Toilet paper. Buy the cheap stuff and compare to the high end brands. Worlds
of difference.

~~~
lotyrin
What point does this make that addresses mine?

Of course there are different qualities of toilet paper. In a commodity-style
market for toilet paper there would be competition on both price and on
quality axes and there would likely be multiple points of equilibrium between
quality and price.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
I think the point is that, in the opinion of many people, the basic, stupid
strategy of walking to the toilet paper aisle and buying the first thing that
matches something you saw on TV _actually works_ in terms of getting a pretty
OK objective quality instance of the product pretty much all the time pretty
much anywhere you go, for a ton of different household products and
commodities.

People choose to differentiate by superficial brand identity specifically
because it creates the experience they want: reproducible access to
consistently acceptable quality.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Which _actually doesn 't work_ when buying a car, because some premium car
brands are notoriously unreliable, prone to basic manufacturing defects,
expensive to run, and inefficient.

Their only selling point is a certain mid-market bling. No one making a
rational decision would ever buy one.

But this is basic US MBA strategy. Cut corners on tangibles, replace them with
hype and marketing bullshit targeted at a specific demographic, then leverage
The Brand™ to charge the highest possible prices.

Use both formal traditional advertising and informal online astroturfing to
maintain the illusion of value.

It's called marketing, but in reality it's industrial-scale behaviour
modification.

~~~
DonHopkins
One of the great selling points of the low-end Yugo was that it had a
defroster on the back windshield, to warm your hands while you pushed it.

~~~
stef25
First heard that joke in the 80s, only it was for Lada

------
dang
Previous threads on this one:

2012
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4535611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4535611)

2010
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1405698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1405698)

2010
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1110283](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1110283)

Diamonds are Bullshit:

2018
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17184539](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17184539)

2015
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9251952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9251952)

2013
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5403988](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5403988)

Diamonds Suck:

2018
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17186457](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17186457)

2016
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12944464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12944464)

Another one from 2010:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1109318](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1109318)

Diamond threads are forever.

~~~
baal80spam
Came here to reccommend Diamonds are Bullshit. It's a fantastic piece.

~~~
fmajid
Indeed, but just as Keynes warned that markets can be irrational longer than
you can be solvent, women have been thoroughly indoctrinated by De Beers and
it's hard to buck the trend.

~~~
henrikschroder
Marry a guy instead, boom, problem solved!

~~~
nine_k
Than _you_ may irrationality want a diamond!

~~~
DonHopkins
"Real men prefer industrial diamonds." -DeBeer's next marketing slogan

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deogeo
One thing I don't quite understand - why didn't a second-hand diamond market
form, if one could get diamonds so much cheaper that way?

~~~
dmitrygr
The article touches on that:

* Marketing to discourage such sales ("a diamond is forever" "a diamond is a family heirloom")

* Few people would be willing to sell something for 1/3 - 1/5 of what they paid for it if said item in no way degraded. It just sucks psychologically

~~~
AnimalMuppet
But if the second-hand diamond market existed, then they would only have
bought it for 1/3 to 1/5 of the current price, too. (You could still face that
problem getting the market going in the first place...)

~~~
dmitrygr
DeBeers used to mandate Jewelers do not buy used diamonds under threat of
inability to buy new ones from them

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DonCarlitos
Great, (very) deep dive into a well-known cartel. Also a lesson in the power
of marketing, advertising & PR. But from 1982... I'd be interested in hearing
about contemporary outcomes of the events described.

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roberdam
It is amazing how much of what we perceive as part of our culture and is
really manufactured by personal and economic interests and we are not even
aware of that.

Diamonds:

 _When the campaign began, in 1967, not quite 5 percent of engaged Japanese
women received a diamond engagement ring. By 1972, the proportion had risen to
27 percent. By 1978, half of all Japanese women who were married wore a
diamond; by 1981, some 60 percent of Japanese brides wore diamonds. In a mere
fourteen years, the 1,500-year Japanese tradition had been radically revised._

Bacon & Eggs for breakfast:

[http://levick.com/blog/public-affairs/history-bacon-
breakfas...](http://levick.com/blog/public-affairs/history-bacon-breakfast-pr-
success-story/)

Some other examples?

~~~
djpowell
The same Edward Bernays also did a PR stunt to market cigarettes to women,
calling them "torches of freedom", associating women's smoking (which was
considered taboo at the time) with feminism.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom)

It is covered in the Adam Curtis documentary, 'The Century of the Self'.

------
ropiwqefjnpoa
Everytime a friend is talking about a diamond ring for their wedding, I have
to keep telling myself "keep your mouth shut!"

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bob33212
I strongly recommend getting a stone other than diamond. A few months after
the engagement no one will ever care for the rest of your life, with the
exception of the jewelry sales person who missed out on the commission.

~~~
Consultant32452
Engagement rings are status symbols, and many women, perhaps even most, will
care about it for the rest of her life. Many women I know upgraded their
stones after the family's economic situation improved over time.

~~~
new2628
Why anyone sane would marry such people is beyond me.

~~~
colechristensen
What about people showing off their car, _perfect_ pictures of their vacations
on social media, some set of achievements or trophies, their perfect
"battlestation" computer setup, etc. etc. etc.

People are generally obsessed with status symbols, jewelry isn't really any
worse than anything else.

~~~
liability
> _" What about people showing off their car, perfect pictures of their
> vacations on social media, some set of achievements or trophies, their
> perfect "battlestation" computer setup, etc. etc. etc."_

You know plenty of people don't do any of this stuff, right? I get the feeling
you meant that to be a broad list that would have virtually everybody covered
in one respect or another, but if that was your intention you failed.

~~~
jeremyjh
Everyone demonstrates their status-seeking in different ways. A really common
one is to emphatically state how little such things that commonly motivate
others also interest you. I guess its ok if that is your thing.

~~~
liability
Status seeking, sure. Materialistic approaches to that? No, that is far from
universal. Me snearing down my nose at people with materialist obsessions is
certainly a form of status seeking, but not of the materialist variety.

------
fnord77
millennials see diamonds as bougie
([https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/20/millennial-couples-arent-
buy...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/20/millennial-couples-arent-buying-
diamonds.html) etc.)

I'm surprised the bottom hasn't fallen out of the diamond market already.

They are falling though:

[https://content.fortune.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/08/diamo...](https://content.fortune.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/08/diamond_price.png)

------
JackFr
Can't figure out if this is an argument for or against bitcoin.

------
fortran77
But there's little harm done.

Nobody needs a gem-quality diamond (and the industrial diamond market wasn't
really manipulated). It's not like they were colluding to raise the price of
insulin or wheat.

The fact that people were willing to accept the idea that they needed a
diamond is as much the responsibility of the people who wanted to buy them, as
it is the responsibility of those who marketed and sold them.

~~~
philwelch
Little harm done, except to children in Sierra Leone forced to mine the
diamonds at gunpoint to enrich warlords.

~~~
wastedhours
That's why I've just bought a lab grown one - don't feel too happy thinking of
something she'll ( _hopefully_ ) be wearing for nigh-on 60 years being the
result of some of the horror stories out there.

(Ignoring the fact that the demand even for lab grown ones is caused by such
accounts...)

