How diamond brands use content to take their story to consumers
Toranj Mehta, Director of Marketing, De Beers Forevermark, talks about its investment in podcast and how a brand can take calculated steps to measure ROI on the medium. She discusses how audio content can give a whole new perspective to the story behind jewellery-making and for the brands in the category
An enormous amount of detailing goes into the manufacturing of each diamond piece and this is what sets the diamond brands apart from the rest of the jewellery companies. And, for these brands, to offer the whole story behind the craftsmanship is not only important to instil confidence in consumers in its quality but is also an engaging source for many.
For these reasons, content in various formats, including audio, video and even textual, has become a vital part of the marketing strategies of brands such as De Beers Forevermark, National Diamond Council and others.
BuzzInContent, in an interaction with Toranj Mehta, Director of Marketing, De Beers Forevermark, discussed how its content strategy has been evolving over the years and shared other content avenues it had been exploring.
Mehta said the brand does invest in content marketing but to a certain extent. It's very limited and is not a huge outlay.
“We believe that if there is content marketing or branded content, it has to really match with our brand purpose and with what De Beers Forevermark actually stands for. And if the content really matches, then we go ahead,” she said.
Apart from the contextual content and blog on its website, it ties up with media houses to showcase the journey of the diamonds from the mind to the finger as it takes extreme pride in the fact that each and every diamond is responsibly sourced.
“The diamond has been tracked right from the time it was discovered from a mine till the time it reaches the consumer and it has positively contributed to each step of the journey. To bring out the journey, we normally tap content providers to create that story,” she said.
The diamond brand has been gradually increasing its investment on influencer marketing. It looks at associating with influencers after a proper analysis of the content an influencer puts out, the engagement rate they have and the amount of originality.
She said, “We firmly believe we will tie up with only those influencers who follow our ideologies and who really identify with the brand. After a lot of search and a lot of hard work, we have been able to identify some influencers. Over the past three or four years we have been increasing our spends on influencer activation. If we were to look at it from last year to this year, it has increased by 100%.”
The brand has been working with luxury lifestyle influencers such as houseofmisu, Natasha Luthra, Maia Sethna and Shrima Rai.
Its influencer marketing for its recently launched Avaanti Collection:
The brand found that influencers with limited followers usually create a huge wave and impact. She said it measures its ROI on influencer marketing on the amount of leads and impressions that they generate.
It is also active on the podcast front. They streamed podcasts both on its website, on platforms such as Spotify and radio channels.
“We have collaborated with partners (for podcast) who really believe in the good that diamonds do and who understand what De Beers Forever is and what it stands for,” Mehta said.
Asked how important audio as a format is for jewellery or diamond brands, she said, “Customers feel tempted for such brands and products, but there is a lot more, especially in terms of the story behind each of these products. The story behind each diamond, the kind of contribution one diamond does to the world overall can only come out in an audio format, which visually you will never be able to see. The audio format actually gives you a whole perspective of the story behind jewellery or the story behind the diamond.”
She said audio allows one to showcase collaborations much more nicely. It recently collaborated with New York-based designer Bibhu Mohapatra, who has spoken about the brand extensively and why he believes in it.
While podcasts do offer many advantages to advertisers, they often complain about the lack of ROI measurement tools for the medium.
Agreeing, Mehta said while there are no measurement methods, one can take certain calculated calls to see the response.
“If there is a third-party evaluation that comes in it, it would be most welcome because right now for ROI measurement, we are dependent only on the channels and the hosts of our podcasts to give us the results. If there is a third-party capture of data and information sharing, that would be great,” she said.
As of now, podcasts are not going to be the brand’s primary medium.
It is often observed that jewellery brands usually touch sentimental and religious chords to find relevance among the audiences. But are there other avenues as well where jewellery messaging can happen?
“Of course, there are many areas,” she said.
“There definitely are avenues where we can move, but one has to look for them. It's not easy but if we want to create an impact and connect with today's consumers. We have to move beyond the older ideas of jewellery,” she added.
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