To Bash Or Not To Bash? Well, No

I get it. It’s not fun to be bashed by a newcomer. Seeing your livelihood hurt, your source of income threatened, the thing that you identify with so much belittled and squashed by a competitor product. It’s not fun.

And yet, is publicly bashing the competition the right response? What does it possibly achieve?

Bashing Background

Long before lab-grown diamonds were a bonified consumer product, they were denigrated by the diamond industry. They were commonly referred to back then as synthetics and were expected to compete with moissanite.

Since then, lab-grown diamonds have created a diamond disruption, especially in the US, but they are slowly capturing market share in India, China, and Australia.

In the process of fighting for consumer attention, a number of lab- grown diamond (LGD) growers began slinging mud at the natural diamond industry, with the goal of discrediting it. This was a negligent move. Others used less direct terminology, but still aimed to downgrade natural diamonds. This included calling lab grown as the ethical alternative, for example, implying that natural diamond mining was not ethical. Not very smart, either.

The response on the part of the diamond industry has included swipes back at lab-grown diamonds, starting slow, but now fully institutionalized.

Currently, bashing lab-grown is a hotly debated topic, and instead of restating the recent flare up, I’ll refer you to two articles, that do a great job at capturing the recent debate by Rob Bates and Leah Meirovich.

Survey Says No

In a small survey on LinkedIn, X, and my Telegram channel, I posted the survey question: “Where do you stand on the issue of the natural diamond industry bashing lab-grown diamonds?”

The results were pretty much split, with nearly half (47%) of the 200 industry member respondents voting that bashing lab-grown diamonds is wrong.

Another 32% felt it was deserved, and 11% actually want to see more of it, voting “not enough of it!” Thus, 43% expressed support for bashing lab-grown diamonds. The rest of the respondents (10%) were “indifferent.” While this is a small sample size, it does reflect that the industry is, at the very least, deeply divided on this topic.

My Take on LGD Bashing

There is a whole group of definitions for marketing. Retail product marketing boils down to the strategy and set of activities that improve your product’s position in the market and drive consumers to stores to buy it.

This is often done through positioning your product either by showing how it fulfills a need, elevates the buyer’s standing, or brings them value in some way.

In the case of diamonds, marketing has promoted their association of beauty, uniqueness, and the billions of years they took to form with enduring love and as a desirable luxury item.

When listening to the points made by industry stakeholders in favor of bashing lab-grown diamonds, you can’t escape the feeling that their attitude has something to do with vindictiveness. These statements include complaints that the industry must reply to LGD claims and cheer when this happens.

True, LGD companies, specifically two of them, have leveled some vile attacks on natural diamonds. These were full of innuendo, baseless claims, exaggeration, and odd references, including hinting in a presentation that mining CEOs had threatened them in private conversations.

But guess what? Since then, one of these growers has disappeared into oblivion, while the other has scrubbed their site of most of their nasty claims, and for a good reason: slinging mud backfires.

Negative Marketing Campaigns = Bad Idea

A significant amount of research has examined the impact of negative marketing on retail products and brands. The short conclusion: while under certain circumstances, it may be effective in politics, in retail, its benefits may be short term, but in the long term, it tends to backfire.

It’s not that an occasional jab at the competition, especially if done with humor, is ineffective. However, angry wars lead to market contraction because this turns off consumers. Never has a combustion engine car manufacturer obsessively bashed Tesla, nor has a platinum jewelry maker expressed contempt toward a gold jewelry company. Sounds ridiculous? Now, imagine how the diamond industry appears from the outside when bashing lab-grown diamonds. It does not generate the kind of diamond consumer behavior wished for.

Another finding is that market leaders never mention their competition. It’s only those fighting for market share who try to take a bite out of the leading product. Oddly, by attacking lab diamonds, the natural diamond industry is acting as the non-leading player, while the lab-grown sector is kind of ignoring natural now that it has (largely) cleaned up its act.

Just to set the record straight on whom the market leader is: total LGD-set jewelry sales in the US have a 15% market share of all diamond sales and less than 10% of global diamond jewelry sales. 

Marketing is Not About Being Vindictive

The goal of category marketing is to advance diamonds and increase sales, not to badmouth the competition and risk alienating consumers.

Assuming that the diamond industry wants to increase sales by positioning natural diamonds as a coveted luxury item, there are plenty of notable examples of such marketing by Cartier, Tiffany, and many others. None of these campaigns have included slamming the competition. And the competition in the luxury goods market is fierce.

Instead, these brands speak of themselves and what they have to offer. Note Cartier’s frequent use of icy cool nature scenes and panthers that emphasize their red brand or Patek, and it’s hinting at generational wealth with the slogan “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation.”

These, as well as ads by Mercedes, Hermes, and many others all exude a cool, relaxed, almost aloof attitude—there’s nothing angry, vindictive, or even remotely upsetting in their promotions. They all emphasize unique experiences that set their clients apart.

The Bottom Line

• One takeaway from all of this is that it is impossible to create the kind of exclusivity needed for a luxury item by bashing a competitor. If you do, by definition you’re not exclusive. You’re not exclusive if there is mudslinging.

• Ironically, it is the lab-grown industry that learned this lesson fast. Over time, they learned that the reason people buy lab diamonds is due to their high association with natural diamonds. Yes, lab-grown clings to natural.

• Negative marketing, while effective in the short term, can be very harmful in the long term and has led to market shrinkage.

• Meanwhile, the LGD sector is behaving like it is number one in the market, and it is gaining market share, while the natural diamond industry is acting like a desperate number two and losing market share.

• So, with all emotions aside, let’s take a deep breath and think about how to create effective category marketing that elevates diamond perception among consumers. To create an exclusive retail product, there are many successful modern marketing models we can learn from. And none of them includes contempt, condemnation, or grumbling. Quite the contrary.

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Photo: Johann Walter Bantz