Industry pushes to restore sparkle of natural diamonds
A marketing drive is using storytelling to win over consumers, particularly targeting the important millennial and Gen Z audience
An organisation that promotes the diamond industry is working to create a “hallmark” for natural diamonds. Amber Pepper, chief executive of the Natural Diamond Council (NDC), says the scheme will help people differentiate between natural and lab-grown stones. “Obviously a mark then goes bigger than just a mark,” she adds, “because a mark then becomes a way consumers are thinking about brand.”
The early-stage project follows the April launch of the inaugural World Diamond Day, which encouraged people to share stories about natural diamonds on social media. These are among varied marketing initiatives aimed at reviving consumer interest in diamonds.
Last year, representatives from diamond-producing countries and De Beers signed the Luanda Accord, committing to fund global generic marketing led by the NDC. Pepper says marketing is a “big focus” following a “softening in spend in recent years”. “Certainly now there is a big pivot back to understanding we really need to be investing and, if we are selling a product that is about storytelling, is about emotion, is about legacy, that story needs to be told,” she says.
The Diamond Report, released by De Beers last month, suggests marketing is “critical” to demand for natural diamonds, which has been hit by factors including the cost of living crisis and introduction of tariffs in the US; “a property crisis and decline in marriage rates in China”; geopolitical instability; soaring gold prices; and an increasing supply of lab-grown diamonds.
In the US, the largest consumer market for diamonds, lab-grown accounted for 25 per cent of the volume, and 18 per cent of the value, of diamond jewellery sold between January and May this year, according to data analytics company Tenoris, which tracks sales at more than 2,000 retailers. Lab-grown represented 57 per cent by units, and 30 per cent by value, of engagement rings sold over the same period, compared with 10 per cent and 9 per cent, respectively, in 2020.
Edahn Golan, co-managing partner of Tenoris, says there is “a migration towards lab-grown” among 25- to 35-year-olds. He says engagement ring purchases in the US are “very price-orientated and there was something very, very appealing in the marketing line [by the lab-grown industry] that said, ‘We’re the same, but cheaper’”. The average retail price of a one-carat round lab-grown diamond fell 79 per cent to $768 between January 2020 and May 2026; a comparable natural diamond dipped 24 per cent to $4,553 due to overall decreased demand. Yet the “appeal of natural diamonds is still very much there”, says Golan. There is a bifurcation in the US jewellery retail market, he says, with items priced at $2,500-plus “in increased demand”. The natural diamond industry is going towards a “luxury market”; lab-grown “will likely take everything else”.
De Beers returned to global category marketing in 2024 to address the widening of competition in luxury and that diamonds were not “top of mind” for purchases, according to Sandrine Conseiller, chief executive of De Beers brands. Last October, it launched the Desert Diamonds campaign to US consumers with the aim of reviving desire through an industry-wide focus on warm white, champagne and amber diamonds. This choice tapped into the macro trend of “the quest for individuality”, particularly among younger people, says Conseiller.
Reaching that demographic is key: millennials represent 32 per cent of US consumers of natural diamonds but 55 per cent of demand value, according to De Beers, while Gen Z is the second-largest group of buyers by generation. Pepper says the NDC is responding to this audience by thinking about the “channel mix” for content. It also has projects that consider natural diamonds from the perspective of AI large language models, which consumers use to research purchases.
Desert Diamonds, which launches in China next month, is having an impact, says Conseiller, who points to a 19 per cent year-on-year rise in sales of K-Z colour diamonds at US independent jewellers in the first quarter of this year, plus their presence on the red carpet. A bridal chapter launched in April, with a focus on stud earrings, tennis bracelets, eternity bands and halo pendants coming in September. New York-based jeweller Jade Trau had met “a little bit of resistance” from clients towards browner diamonds but says “now, people are really embracing them”.
Sales of desert diamonds have been “consistently hot” at Vancouver-based Misfit Diamonds since the wholesaler’s launch in 2019, says founder Ashkan Asgari. “The only thing the De Beers campaign has done is double the price of rough, which is not so fun, but that’s good because it’s nice to see natural diamonds being celebrated and demand growing for the product category.”
Clients of Misfit, which specialises in unusual natural stones, are typically the same age group that buy lab-grown. “Anything natural diamonds can do, lab will find a way to do it, but the price point really doesn’t incentivise people to do imperfect stones . . . so when people want natural, they want something that feels like it came from the earth,” says Asgari, whose company is sponsoring Melee the Show in New York next month as a “new platform” to reach jewellers and grow awareness of unusual diamonds. It is providing stones to jewellers for a design competition. Asgari has used “fun, offbeat marketing” on social media, which he says resonates because it feels genuine. “It’s not the traditional, stuffy, ‘A Diamond is Forever’, this is only high luxury, caviar and private jets type of vibe,” he says.
Consumer habits have changed since copywriter Frances Gerety coined the slogan “A Diamond is Forever” for De Beers in 1947. Women are more involved in choosing engagement rings, while self-purchasing accounts for 31 per cent of US natural diamond demand value, according to De Beers. Diamonds are not necessarily saved for best; brands such as Jessica McCormack promote “day diamonds”.
Conseiller says the marketing line remains relevant but “has a different meaning” to the 1950s, when linked to a love relationship that would endure. In a world “where everything is fast-paced [and] fabricated”, she says the genuine “becomes the ultimate aspiration”. “That ‘foreverness’ is talking to the new generation in that way — that permanence, that idea that we are human and we are in a bigger story than just the one that is on our phone on social networks,” she says.
Pepper thinks storytelling can boost demand for natural diamonds. The industry is “recognising the need not just for marketing, but also understanding that it’s a new consumer . . . and responding to that in a modern, relevant way”, she says.