The Century's Most Groundbreaking
Advertising and How It Changed Us All
They had this problem. They wanted to sell colorless rocks with almost no practical use. Sure, you could grind them up and put them on drill bits, but that is a tiny, tiny market.
Not only that, but the darn things last forever and never wear out. Even worse, they are in tremendous oversupply. They are found in overabundance in South Africa, Zaire, Ghana, Namibia, Botswana, Australia, 
and Siberian Russia.
That was the problem faced by advertising firm N. W. Ayer & Son. Their client, De Beers Consolidated Mines, had already made some inroads with consumers after World War I by linking the giving of diamonds with engagement and marriage. But this product was going to be difficult to sell.
Then in April, 1947 Frances Gerety, one of their copywriters, put her head down in exhaustion. How, oh how, could she link romance, essentially valueless crystals, and human needs in a way which would move these stones. In an inspired moment she wrote, "A Diamond Is Forever."
It was a brilliant solution. A diamond is forever. Your love is forever. The diamond, a memorial to love, must stay in your family. It is an heirloom. Don't even think about selling it.
If you did, the diamond market would collapse. Once you take a diamond from the jeweler, it is worth about 18% of what you paid for it. If most people resold them, they would be worth far less than that.
In Twenty Ads That Shook The World, James B. Twitchell takes us behind 
the scenes of some of the most famous advertising campaigns and peeks into the minds of their creators. In doing so he makes connections most of us have never considered.
For example, much advertising implicitly borrows from religion. It seems to say: buy this product and you will be delivered from affliction. Salvation is available in a small plastic bottle. Wear these sneakers and participate in the godlike life of Michael Jordan.
We are inundated with ads. We might as well understand how they work.
From Twenty Ads That Shook The World:
--"Commercial speech--advertising--makes up most of what we share as a culture…The average young adult today sees some 5,000 ads each day, in almost every minute, in almost every place. The only ad-free refuge is sleep and prayer. Put simply, it's hard to understand a culture that has outposts in your mind."
