Recommendations & Decisions Expected at Industry Generic Marketing Meeting

The proposed industry wide promotional body is slowly developing, with options on how to sustainably fund it to be presented to stakeholders later this month. Following a St. Petersburg meeting in June 2008, heads of the diamond industry decide to form a body that will promote diamonds to consumers.

The meeting led to an agreement, later in the year, to commission McKinsey & Co. to investigate whether such a pan-industry body was necessary. McKinsey concluded that an independently run organization carrying out generic marketing and liaising with other industry bodies to co-ordinate reputational issues was required. The

McKinsey, now in “phase two,” is seeking to devise a sustainable funding mechanism for the proposed new body. Among the considered options, one calls for most everyone to pitch in.

“It was agreed that, ideally, funding would come from across the industry, allowing for representation in the new body from all sections of the value chain,’ said De Beers Media Relations Manager Lynette Gould.

The next meeting, hosted by BHP Billiton in London on February 24, will therefore be open to more industry stakeholders, and not just the steering committee (commonly referred to as SteerCom): De Beers, Alrosa, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Harry Winston.

“Following the meeting, a report on the conclusions and action steps will be distributed to the diamond industry as a whole,” Gould told IDEX Online.

The call for generic diamond advertising followed a decision by De Beers to scale down on its ‘A Diamond is Forever’ campaign. The company said it is no longer the industry’s custodian, and invited other diamond companies to share some of the economic burden.

The St. Petersburg meeting, convened by Alrosa President Sergei Vybornov, was a conclave of 17 company heads and none of the industry organizations. The reasoning was to bring together people that can make multi-million dollar commitments. They included the major diamond miners, bankers and a few other diamond firms, as well as one non-diamond person - Ralph Tavakolian Morgan, deputy general director of Norilsk Nickel, who acted as moderator.