Taylor Swift, Ronaldo and the enduring allure of diamonds
Mbongeni Mguni | Tuesday September 9, 2025 17:01
Under the Luanda Accord signed by Botswana, De Beers, other African diamond producers and the Natural Diamond Council recently, all members will contribute one percent of their revenues to an industry-wide, global marketing campaign.
That campaign is set to kick off in a few weeks and will focus on Gen Zs - the key generation for diamond demand, both now and into the medium term.
Hate it or love it, Gen Zs – known (correctly or incorrectly) for being difficult, fussy and hard to connect with for the older generations – are the ones getting jobs, getting married, starting families.
In other words, they are the ones buying engagement and bridal rings, a category of the market that makes up the majority of sales by value for the natural diamond industry.
Gen Zs, a generation born between 1997 and 2012, are also the ones buying up fashion jewellery, a less important but equally impactful sales category for natural diamonds.
Research from diamond industry legend, Martin Rapaport, also indicates that Gen Z is the generation set to receive trillions of US dollars in inheritance in the medium to short term in America, as the current generation of elderly people bequeath their children. Luxury brands, whose spend millions of dollars forecasting such trends, expect that the Gen Zs will be far more scrupulous with this inheritance and may not follow the old folks in buying classic diamond jewellery, despite the store of value this represents.
Gen Zs are known for believing they are “woke,” meaning they have higher sensitivities to environmental, social and governance impact considerations in their spending choices. The typical Gen Z will ask questions about the origin of their coffee beans at a restaurant and demand answers around ethical sourcing.
However, being “woke” also means, where the generations from Baby Boomers to Millennials, bought into the diamond marketing strategies of yesteryear, Gen Zs believe they can “see through,” the magic.
Gen Zs are naturally sceptical of global marketing campaigns, mistrustful of global corporations and doubtful of their claims.
The natural diamond industry, unfortunately, is built on major corporations, with De Beers dating back to 1888, while the jewellery giants in Europe and the United States are dominated by family traders dating back over the generations.
Online, when someone mentions the real world good that natural diamonds are doing in Botswana, for example, frequently another commenter jumps in pointing out that child labour and conflict are rampant all over African diamond mining. Even when it is explained that Botswana has some of the highest standards of ethical and sustainable mining, governance, transparency and social development, commenters, especially on X (Twitter) punch back with their “facts” about natural diamonds.
Yes, the other thing about many Gen Zs is that they are headstrong in their beliefs. Once they make up their minds about something, getting them off that track and onto another track is difficult, even if the second track is the truth. Gen Zs will believe they have done their research, independently at that, and have all the facts lined up.
The Luanda Accord members recognise this, which is why the upcoming marketing campaign is expected to focus on platforms largely used by Gen Zs.
De Beers’ CEO, Al Cook, understands the importance of curating messages for Gen Zs and leveraging the platforms where they are mostly present. In fact, De Beers has followed its customers on different platforms throughout the decades.
“The upcoming campaign is not using legacy platforms such as us in print or whatever,” he told Mmegi in a recent exclusive interview. “It's going right into what Gen Zs are getting, where they're getting their information from and so it's focused on social media. “It’s interesting because if you look at a century of advertising, De Beers started in colour magazines - that was the big thing in the 1930s. “Then we moved into movies and we had Marilyn Monroe and songs like Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend. “And then as television took over, we went into TV and we had the fantastic television campaigns of the 1990s, the Shadows campaigns. “Now, of course, television is being replaced for a lot of Gen Zs by social media and that’s where the focus of our campaigns will be.”
For now, the Luanda Accord members are yet to share the content of their upcoming campaign, but here are a few ideas to consider.
The right foundation
With the Baby Boomers and all the way to Generation X and a little bit into the Millennials, natural diamond marketing could rely on the Magic Bullet and the functionalist theories of mass communication. In other words, you have a message to get to an audience, you encode it in a medium and fire it at them and they will respond in the manner you intended them to.
Where you could say diamonds are the best jewellery for the expression of love or that they do real world good in countries such as Botswana, Gen Zs have many questions and suspicions. Emerging research shows that more Gen Zs are actually shifting towards gemstones other than diamonds, as the “cool” an unproblematic “in-thing.” In fact diamonds, in some cases, are being seen as “the oldies thing”.
The communication or marketing theory thus has to be nuanced, relevant, tailormade for the specific platform and most importantly, everyone from producers to the independent jewellers in Botswana must be sold on the messaging, for their social media interactions.
The blind spot
As much as Gen Zs believe they are beyond campaigns and are born “free-thinkers” talented at spotting marketing gimmicks, they are also surprisingly prone to the power of influencers. From Jake Paul and his Prime drink craze and more generally, to the rise of the influencer economy powered by social media, Gen Zs have major marketing blind spots.
The upcoming campaign could utilise the momentum built by the spectacular diamond rings associated with the Cristiano Ronaldo and Taylor Swift engagements, to resoundingly hammer home the enduring, inimitable value of natural diamonds.
According to various news outlets, since Taylor Swift’s engagement announcement, US jewellers are reporting high enquiries for natural diamond jewellery, an example of both the emotional and aspirational nature of diamonds. Essentially, they remain the ultimate stone to have to express one’s love.
The bottom line
The upcoming campaign has to be absolutely authentic and have no iota of pretension. Diamonds are an aspirational purchase, not a synthetic that one can walk into a shop on a whim to purchase. They are as rare as they are brilliant as they are wonders of nature. They do and have done incredible work on powering economies such as Botswana and are some of the most life-transforming minerals ever.
They are one of the most heavily monitored industries, whose players are amongst those moving fastest globally on sustainability and environmental considerations.
Besides the influencers who may be engaged on the upcoming campaign, on an ongoing basis, the ordinary citizens of Botswana and other diamond producing nations need to be capacitated to share the facts about diamonds.
More information and capacitation will give Batswana the weapons to build a social media army that can engage more knowledgeably in real time, than any influencer or consultancy could, in defence of natural diamonds.
“I think we've got a fantastic story to tell and I think the American consumer, the European consumer, the Indian consumer is interested to know that story,” said Cook. “They want to know the story of the diamonds. If someone is going to wear a diamond engagement ring on their finger every day of their life, they want to be sure that that diamond represents good.”