Image: first ad rolled out for the U.S. market. Photo courtesy GIA
The Gemological Institute of America (GIA) is unveiling its first new global consumer marketing campaign in more than a decade.
The campaign includes print, radio, digital, and video components. The ads will run in three major diamond markets: the United States, India, and China, in both consumer and trade channels. They feature 12 diverse couples and seven self-purchasers.
It discusses the famous diamonds the GIA lab has graded—such as the Hope and Taylor-Burton—and then notes it also grades “the most valuable diamond of all—yours.”
It will emphasize GIA’s expertise in diamond grading while also tapping into the emotion inherent in every diamond jewelry purchase.
That emotional element, GIA Chief Marketing Officer Mark Buntz said in in an interview last week, was missing in GIA’s previous campaign, which focused on educating consumers about the four Cs.
“We have not focused on the human connection,” he said. “We have not really tied into that love and trust and confidence that we, as GIA, are trying to bring to the marketplace.”
The campaign’s first U.S. video features a couple, and it opens by letting consumers know the lab is “trusted to grade some of the rarest, most precious diamonds in the world,” like the Hope Diamond and the Taylor-Burton, as well as “the most valuable one of all”—the one they receive as an engagement ring.
New videos and display ads featuring different couples and single people buying jewelry for themselves will continue to roll out into 2022.
“It’s a big part of our industry today and we want to celebrate that,” Buntz said of self-purchasers. “We want to shine a light on that.”
Buntz said the marketing campaign was shot over two days in Los Angeles and features 12 different couples as well as seven self-purchasers, all of whom will be divided up among the campaign’s three markets.
The actors featured are diverse not just in terms of race and ethnicity but also age, and the campaign features same-sex couples as well.
It will be seen across GIA’s social media channels in both paid and organic posts, as well as in online and print advertisements in the industry’s trade publications.
