Do you know how deeply good copywriting and marketing has affected your life?

Even something done long before you were a twinkle in your parents’ eyes can be silently influencing you, even today. I am going to expose one such "silent influence" and reveal the one crucial thing you must accomplish to make your prospect buy!

But before I do, I need to ask you one very important question.

Do you know what makes a woman lose her mind?

Yes... it's a diamond.

How do I know? Well, let me tell you the story.

One February day my dear wife made it clear that I needed to replace the stone in her wedding/engagement ring. At the time, my wife Lisa and I had been together for 10 years and the stone in her decade-old ring just up and fell out.

Now to me, this was very sad.

To her it was a tragedy akin to the loss of life on the Titanic.

As you may know, in marketing, timing is one of the three important aspects of making the sale. Being that the loss of this stone coincided with our 10 years together - Lisa had timing on her side. So began the quest for a new diamond.

She already knew what she wanted, I already knew what we were going to spend. One of us was wrong. (Yes, it was me).

As the days went on, Lisa and I went back and forth over what was available and what it would cost. I tried my best to educate her about the power of marketing and what the diamond cartels had done to influence the minds of the buying public. In short, they used good marketing to convince us that useless sparkly rocks were of value to us.

Good marketing is the reason we value useless sparkly rocks

Good marketing is what built the diamond industry as we know it. For example, you may be familiar with the "4c's" of choosing a diamond - color, carat weight, clarity and cut.

We've all heard that "diamonds are forever" and many of you may know that Marilyn Monroe coined the term "a diamond is a girls best friend". Actually Marilyn turned out to be the diamond brokers best friend, but that's another story.

So, here I was trying to convince my wife that what she desired was built on social conditioning and brilliant, even hypnotic marketing, that has changed the thinking of individuals for over 60 years of diamond buying.

You see, my goal was that if I could make my wife see that a diamond is really just a societal status symbol that is highly overrated, we could save a bundle by replacing her stone with a man-made diamond (like a cubic zirconium - only better) and put the money we saved into our kids college savings, a nice cruise, a new home, or whatever.

Emotion versus logic

Now I am not cheap. But as a guy who makes his living compelling people to buy, I am pretty familiar with emotions - versus - logic when it comes to a purchase. I did my absolute best to explain to her that diamonds are highly overvalued rocks with little to no investment value. But I saw in her eyes that I was not getting through. Yes... I was in trouble.

She wanted what she wanted, and there was no reasoning with her. Now I want you to understand that my wife is a sweet woman - but when she gets her eye on something, she's like a laser beam in her focus - and she will find a way to get it. I am, most of the time, happy to oblige, except when I happen to be completely, "logically", in opposition to it.

Like in this particular case.

Of course this was very frustrating to me because I'm a 'marketing genius' and I know ALL about the "diamond deal". Thankfully, I was able to calm down. Probably because I understand that she, like many people, have been convinced, by the marketing machine of the importance of having a diamond on her finger.

The Amazing Story of Diamond Marketing

In September of 1938, N.W. Ayer was contracted by the De Beers diamond cartel to create a new demand for diamonds.

Prior to this diamonds were used primarily by royalty and very seldom. The diamond market was overflowing with supply, but sorely lacking in demand.

The Ayer agency spent a full year doing research before placing the first ad (that's the most important part of creating a winning piece, know your target). Now Ayer had their work cut out for them. The diamond business was best known for it's horrible mining conditions. In fact, the miners in Africa still work under the most intolerable conditions. That's another thing that makes me cringe when I think about supporting the organization through a diamond purchase.

But, on with the story. De Beers was effectively a monopoly, illegal in the USA but because they were located overseas and held their marketing meetings offshore, they were able to skate around US regulations.

Ayer effectively created a strategy for De Beers to advertise for the entire diamond market, because they couldn't legally promote themselves, being a monopoly.

Because men would be doing the majority of buying, Ayers had to concoct a system that would calm them down and guide them through the "buying funnel". Ayers even convinced local jewellers not to advertise because they would cheapen the market.

Scientific guidelines

Ayers came up with the "scientific sounding" guidelines to choosing a diamond.

This was the now the famous "4 C's" (color, carat weight, clarity and cut).

They also invented the amount you should spend on the stone for your bride to be - two months salary.

However, the most important thing they did through all of this was

"create a perceived need"

They were able to convince women that a diamond was the truest expression of love. They convinced men that they needed to spend a specific amount, and that amount was different for each man (two months salary) but still a huge sacrifice. It was brilliant. Simply brilliant.

Today, nearly 70 years after the first ad ran, some of these marketing strategies have become part of our culture.

Think about what you looked at in deciding on a diamond purchase in the past - or if you are yet to go through this process, remember what I've revealed here -you'll surely see it in your own process.

So what's the lesson here?

Create a need where it previously didn't exist and you can sell anything.

A diamond is basically useless. How many useless things would you be willing to spend thousands of dollars on? But on with the story.

The day finally came when my wife and I picked up her newly enhanced ring. I had to admit, it was a beautiful thing to look at (but it's still a rock to me). She's delighted and I am sure all the women that see it will be impressed with the new two-carat, high quality marquise she now proudly displays.

I remain unimpressed.

But I do know one thing. When "momma's" happy, the world is a much more pleasant place.