From Diamonds to
Drugs:
The Power of a Great
Brand Experience
The most powerful brand experiences offer
tangibility and utility. Discover steps you can
take right now to improve your marketing.
From Diamonds to Drugs: The
Power of a Great Brand Experience
Executive Summary
A great brand experience can change the world. Literally. It happened with diamonds.
Diamond engagement rings weren’t that common until the late 1930s, when a global consolidation of diamond
miners called De Beers embarked on a long, ambitious campaign to redefine their flagship product, focusing on
utility the stones could offer. Now, diamonds are essential to the marriage proposal, one of the most powerful
brand experiences of all time.
In this free report from the Phenomblue Strategic Insight Series, we analyze three hugely successful brand
experiences and the common elements that make them great.
You’ll emerge with valuable and actionable insights to immediately improve your marketing, including:
— How to think beyond your marketing campaign to the real-world context where people engage with your product
— How insight, desire and utility create a powerful brand experience
— Why it’s better to facilitate current behaviors than try to create new ones
©2014 PHENOMBLUE LLC.
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Introduction
In the 1930s, a global consolidation of diamond
miners called De Beers wanted to increase the value
of their flagship commodity. After realizing that the
demand for diamonds lagged behind its competitor
stones in the jewelry market, De Beers partnered with
N.W. Ayers to develop a campaign that would not only
sell more diamonds, but redefine the idea of loving
commitment.
Back then Amerian consumers viewed diamonds as
aristocratic, ostentatious and very British. Moreover,
the diamonds sold in America were poor quality
and full of flaws. Good diamonds were perceived
as unobtainable, the way we now view rubies or
emeralds.
A Diamond is Forever
De Beers positioned diamonds as an indispensable
aspect of courtship and marriage, using slightly
different strategies for men and women. To men,
diamonds were to become an expression of love and
a touching way to win a woman’s heart. For women,
diamonds became a largely nonnegotiable sign of a
man’s worth and devotion. He couldn’t put a ring on
it unless it held a diamond.
your life has been touched by a diamond, or will be
soon. Diamonds are priceless. Or so we think.
This is Your Brain
So let’s talk about drugs.
In 1987, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America
commissioned a commercial that would change
breakfast forever. You know the one. An attractive
young actor holds a raw, unblemished egg up to the
camera. “This is your brain,” he says, incredibly.
Crack. The egg spills into the hot frying pan. “This is
your brain on drugs,” he says. Sizzle.
Fuzzy logic aside—did all drugs turn you into
breakfast, or just illegal ones?—the commercial is
unforgetable. The striking visual metaphor dishes up
the anti-drug abuse message simply and memorably,
allowing people of all ages to understand and
remember the ad’s message.
More than just a commercial, the ad entered the
cultural zeitgeist. Comedians made fun of it. Kids
obeyed or ignored it. Millions of omelette-eating
Americans thought of it every time they fried an
egg. While the impact of the overall War on Drugs is
debatable, the power of this ad is not.
De Beers gave diamonds to famous actors and
actresses and splashed their faces in the prominent
magazines and newspapers of the day. These photos
accompanied tales of romantic engagements,
glamorous weddings and undying love. Never mind
the fact that these adultery-filled marriages ended
in divorce more often than not, diamonds came to
symbolize a love as unbreakable as the stone’s own
carbon structure.
Louis C.K.’s Last Laugh (sort of)
The strategy succeeded wildly. In three years,
diamond sales increased 55 percent.
In 2011, tired of entertainment industry middlemen,
Louis C.K. self-released his fourth live special, Live
At the Beacon Theatre, for $5 via digital download
from his personal website. He eschewed anti-piracy
controls in favor of “the honor system.” In 11 days,
he earned over $1,000,000. Operating on the belief
that treating his audience like friends (rather than
potential criminals) C.K. generated a huge social buzz
that spurred huge sales. He provided a great brand
experience on his own terms, without sacrificing
values or profits. His fans rewarded him for it.
Then, in 1947, De Beers sealed the vitality of
diamonds for all time with a simple, powerful slogan:
A Diamond is Forever. These four words created the
illusion that a diamond would never lose its monetary
or emotional value. Like true love, it would last forever.
To this day, the tagline still influences us to pay way
more than the stones are actually worth, simply
because a powerful brand experience redefined social
and cultural norms, creating emotional utility and
adding value far beyond their market worth. Odds are,
©2014 PHENOMBLUE LLC.
Long considered a “comedian’s comedian,” Louis
C.K. has experienced considerable success with the
general public over the past few years. A string of live
albums, television specials and late-night talk show
apperances has bolstered his reputation for smart,
incisive observations that can offend and entertain an
audience, often simultaneously.
Soon, fellow comedians Jim Gaffigan and Aziz Ansari
followed suit, proving C.K. had changed the game for
good.
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“Great brand experiences share four key
elements: utility, risk and strangeness,
intelligent media use and social momentum.”
©2014 PHENOMBLUE LLC.
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What Powerful Brand Experiences Share,
and Why It Matters
Powerful brand experiences display four common
elements:
• utility
• a high tolerance for risk and strangeness
• unique and intelligent use of media
• powerful social momentum
Utility
Utility means delivering tools, interactions and
experiences that people can actually use in their lives.
It is the fundamental condition that must be met to
deliver a powerful brand experience. And like social
momentum, utility is one of the hardest things to
get right. Most products and services just aren’t very
useful.
Risk and Strangeness
The best brand experiences are strange, at first.
They change the game so much that they become
culturally normal. A diamond is forever? No way. This
is your brain on drugs? Hardly. You’re selling your film
for $5, but if I steal it, you’re cool with that? Huh.
But they aren’t just weird for the sake of weird. Above
all, they deliver utility before employing strangeness
as a memory enhancing technique, a hard-to-define
yet visceral element that bypasses our brains’
rational circuitry to captivate our hearts. Strangeness
can be effective only if the brand experience is
understandable and only if it offers a powerful and
actionable interaction.
the worst economic depression in history. Partnership
for a Drug-Free America seared its commercial into
young minds when they were most likely to catch it:
Saturday morning, breakfast time. And Louis C.K.
used rising sentiment against the entertainment
industry to his advantage, risking IP theft to treat his
fans as friends.
Social Momentum
Finally, social contagiousness is the make-or-break
element of the powerful brand experience, and
the hardest to achieve. On the strength of selfsustaining social momentum, our three spotlighted
brand experiences changed some aspect of cultural
consciousness, from big (diamonds as a lasting
symbol of love) to small (eggs as a symbol for the
brain). Like writing a hit song, it’s impossible to
predict which brand experience will generate a selfsustaining cycle of desire. Focus on the fundamentals
and you can at least position yourself for a place in
the cultural spotlight.
Last Thoughts and Takeaways
Powerful brand experiences share a few universal
inputs (utility, innovative and intelligent media use,
strangeness and significant strategic risk) and
outputs (social momentum and culture shift). Brands
and their partners should have a deep understanding
of contemporary culture, as well as the expertise and
guts to create a lasting impact. It’s hard work, but
somebody’s gotta do it. Might as well be you.
Of course, it takes guts to deliver something
intentionally strange. If you’re just trying to meet
this year’s marketing objectives, then play it safe.
If you fail, you probably won’t fail too hard. Unless
you’re trying to make a long-lasting impact, adding
strangeness is probably not worth the risk.
But if you’re doing something big, like reinventing a
major life ritual, then you should risk looking like a
fool. That’s the only way it will work.
Intelligent Media Use
No matter when they appear, great brand experiences
use the right media channels in a unique and
intelligent way. De Beers placed embellished tales of
the romantic exploits of Hollywood movie stars in the
most relevant media of the day to a culture shaken by
©2014 PHENOMBLUE LLC.
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About Us
Phenomblue is a privately held connected
communications firm, building brands to
ensure success in the connected age. Using its
PTSApproach™, Phenomblue partners with
companies of all shapes and sizes to define strategy
and execute transformative creative solutions,
harnessing the modern interaction between people
and brands. Founded in 2004, Phenomblue is a
top communications firm and has been featured
numerous times in USA Today, Wired, Ad Age, Fast
Company, The Wall Street Journal and The New York
Times. For additional information,
visit Phenomblue.com.
©2014 PHENOMBLUE LLC.
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