453320
0GhilaniJournal of Communication Inquiry
JCI36310.1177/019685991245332
DeBeers’ “Fighting
Diamonds”: Recruiting
American Consumers in
World War II Advertising
Journal of Communication Inquiry
36(3) 222­–245
© The Author(s) 2012
Reprints and permission:
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DOI: 10.1177/0196859912453320
http://jci.sagepub.com
Jessica L. Ghilani1
Abstract
In the 1940s, the advertising agency, N.W. Ayer, created for then-client, DeBeers
Consolidated Mines, a campaign that wedded the values of patriotism, American
citizenship, and luxury consumerism through advertising copy. The text and
accompanying images touted what they termed “Fighting Diamonds.” While most
American military and labor propaganda of World War II encouraged civilians to
sacrifice, ration, and save, “Fighting Diamonds” ads assured would-be buyers that their
wartime gemstone diamond and jewelry splurges supported the Allied Forces. This
article examines the connections between American military recruitment history and
DeBeers’ “Fighting Diamond” advertisements via a series of archival materials from
the N.W. Ayer and Son Advertising Agency Records at the Smithsonian National
Museum of American History Archives Center. I argue that “Fighting Diamonds”
were part of a growing trend within advertisement propaganda that positioned
American political participation and civic duties increasingly as consumer decisions.
Keywords
advertising, diamonds, World War II, propaganda, consumerism
In the early 1940s, the advertising agency, N.W. Ayer and Son, created for then-client
and global diamond cartel, DeBeers Consolidated Mines, a campaign that wedded the
values of patriotism, American citizenship, and luxury consumerism through advertising copy. The text and accompanying imagery of this particular public relations
1
University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Corresponding Author:
Jessica L. Ghilani, Assistant Professor of Communication, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg,
101 Faculty Office Building, 150 Finoli Drive, Greensburg, PA 15601, USA
Email: [email protected]
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project crafted a complex argument justifying wartime sales of precious gemstone
jewelry pieces by framing them strategically as “Fighting Diamonds” (Ayer Agency
Records, 1943). The language that named and described the gemstone jewelry in these
advertisements imbued diamond consumerism with the ideology of militarism. Phrases
like “Fighting Diamonds,” “Diamonds of War,” and “Invincible Diamonds,” worked
symbolically and with duality.1 They referred both to those industrial grade diamonds
used in the machining and manufacturing of weaponry and, as the ads endeavored
textually to assert, any luxury gemstone jewelry purchases made during wartime. This
article examines the case of diamond advertising in the early 1940s, the role of
DeBeers’ advertising agency in America, and the unique advertising strategies set
forth amid the war, to expose an under-theorized and strange public relations partnership. By co-opting the rhetoric of consumer movements that developed during the
Great Depression, Ayer implored wealthy Americans to participate in consumer politics by voting for patriotic luxury with their dollars. In contradiction with the very
movement they appropriated, I argue that Ayer exploited its status as Army advertiser
by capitalizing the broader ad industry’s increasing recognition for public and government service through the War Advertising Council during World War II. Ayer’s client
relationship with the US Army branch emboldened the firm to tread unethically with
the DeBeers campaign, making misleading and sometimes outright dishonest claims
about the diamond industry’s role in the overall war effort.
As diamond jewelry sales shrunk amid a war-torn Europe, DeBeers pinpointed the
United States as the most desirable geographical market for their jewelry during World
War II2 (Epstein, 1982b). The price of diamonds had fallen and the diamond cartel’s
efforts to limit supply by temporarily closing some South African mines did not
incite significant changes in demand (Gregory, 1962). Anti-trust laws in the United
States made it necessary that DeBeers delegate a consequential amount of power to
their ad agency, then-Philadelphia based N.W. Ayer and Son3 (Hower, 1939). Globally,
DeBeers operated as a price-fixing cartel and an American business presence would
have led to governmental investigation. For this reason, their advertising agency,
Ayer, maintained the company’s corporate operations on the US soil. These public
relations responsibilities were in addition to the task of crafting iconic marketing campaigns (Epstein, 1982a). The complicated history of the diamond industry and
DeBeers’ ethically questionable place within it comprises enough information to fill
multivolume books. To clarify, this particular article brackets its focus around the
details of Ayer’s role in DeBeers’ American business conduct in the early 1940s, the
specific “Fighting Diamonds” advertising campaign as a militarized strategy of consumer politics, and the related details of the historical context of consumer advertising
during World War II. To that end, the order of this article is as follows: I will briefly
overview the history of N.W. Ayer and Son, detailing Ayer’s relationship with
DeBeers; I will discuss the significance of the “Fighting Diamonds” campaign: Its ads,
its ethics, and its historical context. But first, I will provide the necessary background
information on the advertising industry, the War Advertising Council, the influence of
consumer movements on civic participation, as well as a review of theories and literature that inform this article.
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The Advertising Industry and Its Discontents
By the early 1940s, the advertising industry had become one of the most influential in
the nation. Advertisements colonized the public and private spheres of Americans, to
sell, as Roland Marchand (1985) puts it, “the American Dream.” The medium of
advertising in the twentieth century demonstrated visually and textually the evolution
of a cultural history (Lears, 1994). The contents and styles of popular advertisements
strove to remain current by accommodating broader social configurations dictated by
historical moments and contexts, for example depicting women entering the labor
force while American men were serving abroad during World War II (Ewen, 2001).
Such ads normalized and legitimized women’s workforce participation through representations. Ads tried simultaneously to reflect some version of normative reality while
manufacturing aspirational desires for goods, services, and ideas.
Advertising also could disseminate trends, influencing consumer behaviors and
actions. For example, many World War II era ads depicted self-conscious arguments
for thrift, patriotism, sacrifice, and civic obligation (McGovern, 2006). As if to rationalize for consumers that if you must buy, buy from our good, American, patriotic
company, campaigns acknowledged war first and pressed the sales pitch second. Mark
Leff (1991) writes that “Despite or even because of its variegated usage, sacrifice
decisively shaped the discourse of wartime politics” (p. 1296). Within this discourse
was a hierarchy of sacrifice, in which suggested domestic behaviors of patriotism and
support were subordinate, though not insignificant, to the heroic actions of “our boys”
fighting overseas (Leff, 1991). The framework of subordinate, but not insignificant,
sacrifice on the domestic front was one of civic obligation. Thrifty themes about consumer practices permeated the landscape of propaganda, necessitating a mediated
environment in which advertisement messages would dovetail rather than conflict.
Although during times of peace it was advertising that would offer ontological lifestyle exemplars for mass audiences, during war, the constructions of American citizens’ civic duties were propagated through propaganda. With regard to consumer
behaviors, the wartime scope of civic duties overwhelmingly involved sacrifice, not
indulgence or excess. Citizens were discouraged from wasteful spending and conspicuous consumption. As the images in Figure 1 demonstrate, domestic propaganda
circulating within the public sphere instructed citizens to ration, manage with less, and
conserve.
Because advertisers created ideas and campaigns rather than more tangible material
goods, the advertising industry itself was insulated from many of the production shortages that impacted other sectors of the economy during war (Young, 2005). The clients that normally patronized ad agencies, however, were not so fortunate. To address
the shortages and to promote responsible consumption, war propaganda implored
Americans to “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” (Winkler, 2007,
para. 6). Consumption then, “became a principle vehicle for the articulation of citizenship during World War II” (McGovern, 2006, p.327). Prescribing consumer behaviors
became a common practice in propaganda messages. Robert Westbrook (1993) argues
that during World War II, the messages that resonated most with American families
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Figure 1. American World War II propaganda posters. This figure is a montage of
propaganda from World War II encouraging thrift and sacrifice
were those centered on private, domestic life. The patriotic behaviors that could be
exerted most readily were ones that framed civic obligation as a family matter. But
the vast majority of messages and instructions came through mass mediation. Paul
Rutherford (2000) argues that the public service campaigns circulated during times of
war and times of peace colonized the public sphere with messages about model citizenship and civility. Mass messages discouraging the public from indulgent consumption fostered a marketplace anxiety that caused some advertising clients to question
the effectiveness and appropriateness of commercial advertising during war (Glickman,
2001). Apart from struggling to maintain an active client roster, advertisers faced
unique challenges in reflecting the cultural currents of patriotism. The usual commercial objectives to sell products in excess to American consumers conflicted with the
Office of War Information’s desired constructions of consumer citizenship (McGovern,
2006). To promote the field and foster positive public relations for the industry, some
advertising leaders lent their talents to government, crafting the very messages that ran
in contradiction with their clients’ profit goals.
During both World War I and World War II, Madison Avenue “went to war,” by
serving its government as a consultant, offering expertise in psychology, branding,
propaganda, and design to rally public support for American military efforts (Fox, 1975).
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Similar to the domestic, visual culture of World War I, propaganda during World War
II articulated behavioral expressions of patriotism and civic duty to an American public through posters. According to Alexander (1992), the medium and messages of
political posters were integral to selling what was initially an unpopular military intervention during World War I. Posters assisted in the process of configuring strong
emotional arguments by using symbolic depictions of women and children that justified the US involvement (Pope, 1980). Without exposure to such propaganda messages, many Americans may have continued to support a foreign policy of
noninterventionism or even isolationism.4 An example of visual rhetoric in posters is
shown in Figure 2. This simple, evocative World War I era poster was titled, “Enlist.”
The emotional gravity of the sinking of passenger ship, Lusitania, was encapsulated
visually through this angelic yet haunting image of floating mother and child corpses.
The German bombing and sinking of the ship led to nearly 1,200 deaths, significantly
influencing the global public opinion about the war5 (Preston, 2002). With guidance
from the advertising industry, this compelling visual argument amplified support for
American entrance into World War I. Similarly, during World War II advertisements
and propaganda referenced the domestic attack on Pearl Harbor as shorthand to invoke
emotional gravity, sorrow, and rationalization for war (Henthorn, 2006).
By the time the United States joined World War II, Madison Avenue advertising
agencies were struggling to rehabilitate public attitudes toward advertisers in the wake
of the Great Depression. The Depression fostered economic circumstances that led
consumers to be more cautious with their dollars and more suspicious of advertising.
According to Stole (2006), many consumer activists criticized advertising as corporate
propaganda that undermined the ability for citizens to participate democratically. The
legacy of 1930s labor unrest and consumer activism engendered distrust in corporate
interests, of which advertisers were doubly guilty in helping and in being corporations.
The efforts made by consumer activist groups to regulate the ad sector against manipulative and misleading claims continued to effect the field’s reputation (Stole, 2006).
Truth in advertising was cited frequently among the demands of consumer groups
(Glickman, 2001). The industry needed a public relations facelift in the form of recognition for its voluntary, uncompensated consulting services to government during
wartime.
In 1941, James Webb Young, an advertising executive from top agency, J. Walter
Thompson, spoke at a meeting of hundreds of industry professionals. Young argued
that advertising the public interest would be good for both the American public and
industry public relations (Ad Council, 2002). To execute Young’s idea and make the
advertising industry’s contributions to the war effort more legitimate and publicized,
industry leaders from big agencies, including Ayer, founded the War Advertising
Council in 1942.6 They aimed to preserve and advance the role of advertising in
American society by coordinating industry volunteers to work with the Office of War
Information and other government agencies in need of wartime assistance. The War
Advertising Council was an opportunity to counter anti-advertising tides of public
opinion. One of the first efforts made by the Council was rebranding government
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Figure 2. “Enlist” poster from World War I. Figure 2 is one of numerous World War
I posters created to encourage recruitment in the United States following the sinking of
passenger ship, Lusitania
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savings bonds as “war bonds.” But with industry leaders crafting public service campaigns for the government, the line between advertising and propaganda became even
murkier than before.
Henthorn (2006) writes that “the distinctions between propaganda, war information, and advertising were completely obscured,” during World War II because the
same people who were crafting government campaigns were also working for commercial clients (p. 6). The War Advertising Council aimed to uphold public interests
during wartime, creating iconic propaganda imagery still in popular cultural circulation today. Despite enduring friction between business and government over New
Deal politics, the Roosevelt administration entrusted this task of selling the war to
professionals. The professionals were eager in part because they feared obsolescence
(Henthorn, 2006). Commercial clients were wary of investing money in marketing
when wartime consumer behaviors were unpredictable. The War Advertising Council
was a unique vehicle through which leaders legitimized their profession and their abilities through this (mostly unpaid) work.
Consumer Politics During War
As described above, at times the commercial objectives to sell consumer goods were
in conflict with many of the propaganda messages that permeated the public sphere,
encouraging sacrifice and thrift. In addition to the mostly unpaid efforts for the War
Advertising Council, ad firms had paying clients to please. Campaigns needed to be
crafted carefully, arguing with subtlety that consumers could have it both ways. By
encouraging Americans to spend their disposable incomes with strategic and patriotic
discretion, plenty of brands touted their victory industry ties. Manufacturers like
General Electric and Firestone had marketing messages that featured their contributions to the domestic and war fronts (McGovern, 2006). The subtextual argument was
that buying responsibly allowed consumers to vote with their dollars for brands that
helped the Allies. Consumers could fulfill their civic duties without exerting extreme
thrift. While many manufacturers of a broad range of consumer products also produced military equipment and weaponry, some brands claimed ties that were more
tenuous. As a result, extra effort was made to articulate abstractly to consumers the
ways that their purchase supported war. This practice was risky for brands and advertisers. And when the genre of goods being sold was deemed already indulgent and
superfluous, the task of selling became further complicated. Ayer was one of the
agencies that merged potentially dissonant values of patriotic participation with luxury consumption as exemplified through its campaign for its DeBeers client. Despite
the circumstances of controlled diamond supplies and an excess of industrial grade
diamonds used in manufacturing, commercial ads from the war period mimicked the
tropes and strategies of propaganda to sell diamond jewelry as a patriotic good.
Some commercial advertisements began to assert that material consumption could
be counted among the civic duties extolled through propagandas. Ads aimed to reshape
prevailing attitudes about wartime thrift and sacrifice and ignore the popular “use it
up, wear it out, make it do, or do without,” motto. For the sake of profits, advertisers
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suggested that Americans buy their expressions of patriotic participation through consumerism on the domestic front. The themes of consumer politics enabled an argument to follow that civic participation could occur in the form of strategic consumerism.
Advertisers appropriated consumer politics by offering messages that their clients’
products were ethical objects to purchase during war. Some did so regardless of the
status of sincere economic or industrial linkages between consumer purchases and war
support. Asking citizens to consider voting with their dollars in the marketplace was
an idea that emerged through the organizing efforts of consumer activist groups that
formed during the Depression (Glickman, 2001). If the motto of a consumer democracy was that citizens voted with their dollars, it followed that such a movement would
build momentum when “the people” had fewer precious dollars with which to vote.
But World War II marked a turning point when advertisers began to co-opt the language of these movements for their own gain. Because of the widespread messages
from propaganda posters the political conditions facilitated calls for citizens to exert
their civic duty through consumption. Advertisers capitalized easily on this particular
tide by presenting their clients as a logical patriotic choice.
Advertisers including Ayer saw the power of public relations when it came to consumer political movements, which were becoming more organized and influential than
ever before. McGovern (2006) writes that in the early decades of the twentieth century
special interest groups and industries competed to affect policy makers and publics in
configuring what became the American consumer culture. Because mass consumption
was essential to economic growth, the sways of both corporate and consumer publics
grew considerably, if not equitably. By espousing the democratic tropes of freedom,
choice, and election, the branded messages of corporations offered consumption as a
venue for participatory citizenship, circumscribing the power of the people to the mass
markets. In the 1940s, the “victory industries” mitigated some of the side effects of
wartime strife and associated consumer sacrifice. In this period, advertisers integrated
patriotic prowar messages into ad campaigns for American brands and products. But
with fewer discretionary dollars to spread around and the demands of propaganda beckoning, Americans were encouraged by the Office of War Information to be cautious
spenders. Advertisements that adopted the rhetoric of consumer politics were successful in influencing consumer behaviors (Young, 2005). McGovern (2006) details how a
marketplace agenda furthered through advertisements repositioned the empowerment
of consumer choice by equating consumerism with democratic agency. And by the
mid-twentieth century, as consumer historian and cultural theorist Lizabeth Cohen
(2003) argues, audiences came to equate purchasing with power and consumer choice
with liberty. The mass medium of advertising had the power to constitute audiences and
frame for them the scope of normalcy within their expected social roles. Advertisers
enjoyed the power of mass mediation, transmitting mass messages via radio, magazines, newspapers, and eventually television. The industry seized on the opportunity to
influence consumer behaviors with the rhetoric of consumer political movements. With
the war as justification, consumer politics began to line pockets rather than execute
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more altruistic goals: To empower and organize citizen boycotts or buycotts. That is not
to say that consumer movements were neutralized entirely by the ad industry. But the
appropriation of consumer politics enabled advertisers to frame strategically the act of
shopping as a patriotic duty. The degrees of success varied across a number of large
firms, including Ayer. The “Fighting Diamonds” ads were part and parcel of this nowubiquitous trend. The campaign’s goal to advertise diamond purchasing as patriotic
participation during wartime was both unique and challenging. Confusing luxury consumption with civic participation misled audiences into believing they were supporting
the war by supporting a price-fixing, global diamond giant.
Ayer and DeBeers
During World War II, the same advertising agency commissioned to create military
recruitment campaigns for the US Army branch was writing ad copies and conducting
businesses on behalf of its diamond cartel client, DeBeers (Ayer Agency Records,
1943). In the offices of Ayer, where savvy thinking about military recruitment and
public support for the war were already occurring on behalf of a billable client, applying the values of militarism to commercial clients made strategic sense. But with
DeBeers, particularly, this strategic connection was questionable at best. Industrial
diamonds were used in the manufacturing of precision weaponry and this provided a
prevailing case to claim that purchasing “Diamonds could help win the war.” The
logistics of this claim were more uncertain. Technically, industrial diamonds were
used in the machining process. But unlike many sectors of the victory industries, there
was not a shortage of industrial diamonds globally or for the Allied force. There was
no need for further mining because the supplies of both gemstone and industrial diamonds were excessive and unreflective of commercial retail pricing. DeBeers monopolized aspects of mining, processing, manufacturing, and distributing the majority of
the world’s diamonds, including those that were industrial grade (Epstein, 1984). The
American public lacked access to information on the corporate logistics of this global
cartel, in part because they held no business presence on the US soil. Without governmental investigation and antitrust proceedings, DeBeers advertisements enjoyed some
amount of insulation from anticorporate contempt. Ayer was able to implement the
ideology of militarism to execute advertising for an indulgent luxury good during
wartime. The ideological work of militarism, which Enloe (1983) defines as a stepby-step process in which military intervention, its values and/or ideology appear
natural and even beneficial for the individual and society write large through daily
public and private control, normalizes and neutralizes those that are previously problematic. A good example is the normalization of a nation’s military role in international politics. In order for big agencies like Ayer to effectively and totally sell war to
consumers they had to also militarize the private sphere with complicity/permission
from the American public. This can be detected in the fluidity between genres of
propaganda and advertising from the period.
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As detailed above, and particularly during the Great Depression, consumers were
politically empowered by advocacy organizations that encouraged the expressions of
public sphere participation and civic obligation via individual shopping decisions.
Cohen (2003) says that “citizen consumers” were those individuals who exerted consumer political agency by voting with their dollars (p. 28). It is important to recognize
that the scope of consumer politics was limited in terms of influence. Most importantly,
consumer politics often necessitated socioeconomic privileges and comfort. The people
who were socioeconomically comfortable enough to spend discretionary income could
participate the most. Still, the advocacy organizations that consumer political groups
created predated the women’s and civil rights movements. They offered minorities,
typically marginalized from traditional (nonvoting) forms of public sphere participation, some access to power (albeit limited) because they were recognizable consumer
markets. Cohen (2003) writes that eventually in the mid-twentieth century “purchaser
consumers” merged with the more politically engaged citizen consumers (p. 56). Civic
and political participation through shopping rather than other forms of community
engagement enabled more individuality in the public sphere. The result was a comfortable alienation that became the American dream of a nuclear family (Cohen, 2003). As
one of the most powerful ad agencies in the nation, Ayer was responsible for crafting
and perpetuating the ideologies of consumerism and the American Dream.
Among the oldest advertising agencies in the United States, N.W. Ayer and Son
was founded in 1869. It was credited as the first agency to hire full time copywriters,
first to hire artists, first to advertise on radio, and first to establish a public relations
department (Minick, Simmons, & Richards, 2004). And it was considered to be among
the vanguard of agencies that forged a boom in the advertising industry, convincing
many brands to contract their marketing needs off-site rather than to do them in-house.
Ayer crafted some of the most famous slogans in American history. They include
Morton Salt’s “When it rains it pours,” AT&T’s “Reach out and touch someone,”
Camel Cigarettes’ “I’d walk a mile for a camel,” and the US Army’s “Be all you can
be.” In 1947, they also authored the slogan that DeBeers still uses today: “A diamond
is forever” (Minick, Simmons, & Richards, 2004). Eventually after some acquisitions
and mergers, Ayer was bought by a Paris firm and eventually dissolved in 2002. The
company’s archival records were donated to the National Museum of American
History’s Archives Center Library. While researching Ayer’s work for the Army,
I came on the “Fighting Diamonds.” They were anomalies among a sea of conventional diamond advertisements crafted for DeBeers in the 1940s and beyond. Rather
than emphasizing the sentimentality and manufactured history of diamonds as integral
to life’s most precious moments, these ads were draped symbolically with the American
flag. Although patriotism became an integral component of Madison Avenue strategies during World War II, the ads for DeBeers were unique in that they asserted a
direct industry correlation between luxury diamond sales and victorious military
efforts abroad. They were asking consumers to express their support for the war by
buying something completely indulgent and excessive: jewelry. This rhetoric ran
counter to the efforts to foster sacrifice and rationing in the government’s propaganda
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for domestic expressions of patriotism. As the advertiser for the US Army and as one
of the agencies assisting the War Advertising Council, Ayer was uniquely suited to
craft patriotic copy. And much like the Army client, DeBeers and Ayer maintained a
close relationship that was unlike most agency-client dynamics.
Ayer’s work for DeBeers spanned decades because it was difficult to maintain a
price-fixing global monopoly without crucial public relations assistance. Manipulating
the supply and inflating the price of diamonds were not enough. Demand had to be
manufactured and maintained. Keeping diamonds desirable was too high a priority to
leave vulnerable to economic ebbs and flows or trends in fashion. In the 1930s, during
the Great Depression, it became clear that DeBeers needed to transition diamonds
ideologically, from merely a good to an emotion (Epstein, 1982a). If diamonds became
integral components of courtship they would be both trend and recession-proof. So
Harry Oppenheimer, the chairman of DeBeers, hired Ayer to “investigate the possibilities of creating such a diamond mind” (Epstein, 1982a, ch. 13, para. 3). One of the
central venues for manufacturing the diamond ideology was popular culture. To glamorize and disseminate messages about diamonds, Ayer paid Hollywood studios to
place diamond jewelry on celebrities and in films. Diamond rings became the central
focus during climactic marriage proposal scenes. To dovetail with these efforts, jewelry salespeople were trained and encouraged, through trade paper advertisements like
the one pictured in figure 3, to deliver lectures at public high schools and colleges
about the importance of diamond rings in engagement proposals. Ayer developed a
lecture template on behalf of DeBeers in 1944, and offered suggestions for jewelers
about how to slant the scope of the talk depending on demographic characteristics of
the audience (see Figure 3).
These strategies worked in tandem to market aggressively the public image of diamonds and cultivate a narrativized mythology that could transcend them culturally,
beyond mere mineral objects. As per the advertisement that ran in National Jeweler
magazine lectures were given in “mostly colleges, where talks are slanted to fit into
various classroom courses including geology, gemology, economics, fashion, merchandising, and many others” (Ayer Agency Records, 1943). Encountering this captive audience under the auspices of education provided a convenient forum in which
to “advance the diamond ring tradition” (Ayer Agency Records, 1943, Figure 3). The
ad even noted that the young people in those classrooms were likely to someday plan
engagements and marriages, making them potential customers. The impressions that
such potential consumers had of diamonds and subsequently of DeBeers were vital. A
company memo noted that “The problem is to convince the American public that the
diamond industry, though an admitted monopoly, operates fairly and in a manner that
accords with American interest . . . . This must be done in a way that will stand up
under attack even from a government source” (Stimson, 1946 as cited in Roberts,
2003, p. 129). They did so with advertising and public relations, particularly during
wartime, even when their strategy was questionable on ethical grounds.
Ayer’s responsibilities for DeBeers were significant. They helped the company
adopt the wartime rhetoric of sacrifice and strife to remain viable. It was clear that
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Figure 3. Lectures on diamonds trade paper advertisement. Figure 3 is an advertisement
that ran in jewelry industry trade magazines, encouraging small business people to broaden
sales pitches to new audiences through public lectures
even people who could afford diamond jewelry during World War II might feel guilty
about such indulgent purchases. Ayer needed to design for DeBeers a strategy that
would preemptively absolve the consumer of wrongdoing. They did so with marketing
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Figure 4. Diamonds of War. DeBeers’ agency, Ayer coined militaristic slogans of patriotism
like “Diamonds of War” to assert diamonds’ participation in “victory industries”
and public relations, disregarding the reality of DeBeers’ corporate circumstances.
The resulting public relations campaign purported that gemstone jewelry purchases
funded the mining for “Diamonds of War,” as shown in Figure 4.
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The copy read, “As they come out of mines, which are a key resource of the United
Nations, among them are discovered the star like gem diamonds of tradition” (Ayer
Agency Records, 1943). Without furthering the lucrative diamond market, Ayer led
American consumers to believe that “the expense of mining for essential industrial
stones would greatly increase, add(ing) to the cost of victory” (Ayer Agency Records,
1943). Although the ads claimed that wartime gemstone diamond sales funded the
mining of industrial diamonds, little mining for industrial or gemstones was actually
taking place (Roberts, 2003). As mentioned above, DeBeers’ vaults were full. The
mines that produced the largest volume of industrial and high quality gemstone diamonds were shuttered temporarily to give consumer sales the chance to accelerate. In
a company memo on January 26th, 1942, just over a month following the bombing of
Pearl Harbor, copywriters were encouraged to put, “some mention of industrial diamonds in the new DeBeers advertising (for gems), on the ground that industrial diamonds would not have been available in the quantities, which are being received
today, were it not for the gem diamond operations” (Roberts, 2003, p. 156). Linking
diamond sales to the war would ultimately prevent DeBeers from facing another
period of shrinking sales. The “Fighting Diamonds” ads coupled with the general
expansion of DeBeers marketing proved to be extremely successful. Revenue for
DeBeers grew substantially in the early 1940s, when they spent an annual amount of
US$500,000 on advertising (Stimson, 1946). The “Fighting Diamonds” campaigns
ran in popular magazines and periodicals and the ads substantiated their bold claims
with visual arguments. Each image featured pieces of gemstone jewelry, such as
engagement rings or decorative pins. Then they were paired strategically with
enhanced images of industrial diamond-tipped tools. The diamonds in both industrial
and gemstone pieces sparkled brightly, beckoning consumers to purchase. The ads
captioned each image with very small typeface, explaining either the names of the
gemstone jewelry or the names and purposes of the industrial diamond tools featured
(see Figure 5).
The accompanying text rallied and instigated military pride, anthropomorphizing
the diamond tipped tools as heroes in the war. It read, “To the constant embarrassment
of the enemy, these mighty midgets are almost wholly a natural resource of the United
Nations. The United States alone will use about 4,500,000 carats (in tiny fragments) in
its Victory industries this year” (Ayer Agency Records, 1943). Carefully, the ad reiterated that diamond jewelry was the “highest gift of sentiment.” Many similar ads conveyed this anthropomorphic heroism of diamonds with phrases like, “Jewelry Jeeps,”
“Diamonds in Overalls,” “Diamonds Break a Bottleneck,” and “Diamonds Go to the
Front” (Roberts, 2003, p. 148). In these ads, diamonds were positioned dually, as both
the perfect gift for the one you love and the perfect way to express patriotism for the
country you love.
With the support of the agency, the vice president of Ayer maintained tight control
of the public image of the diamond cartel on the US soil. The patriotic series of ads for
“fighting diamonds” wedded the values of war propaganda with an agenda of free
market capitalism. The purchases of these expensive luxury goods were framed as acts
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Figure 5. The Fighting Diamonds. “Fighting Diamonds” ads paired images of jewelry pieces
with powerful tools of manufacturing. Diamond-tipped drill bits were juxtaposed with
sparkling engagement rings
of patriotic consumer participation despite the company’s efforts to close mines for
price-fixing. Ads trumpeted that “Invincible Diamonds” were at work all over
America. For example, Figure 6 reads, “A nation with an adequate supply of industrial
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Figure 6. The Invincible Diamonds. “Invincible Diamonds,” referred to both the alleged
indestructibility of the mineral and the sentimental significance advertisers attributed to
diamonds in their marketing
diamonds has a tremendous asset in waging mechanized war” (Ayer Agency Records,
1943). While this might have been technically truthful, and diamonds were indeed
used in weapons manufacturing, the ads misled consumers to believe that production
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levels hinged on new sales of jewelry (Epstein, 1982b). A company memo stated that
Ayer should take all necessary steps to ensure the public’s positive opinion of DeBeers,
although the U.S. government’s regulations limited the business activity of cartels
(Ayer Agency Records, 1943). According to the advertising copy, Invincible Diamonds
were hard at work in factories across America: “In drills, dies, abrasive wheels, they
are biting, cutting, polishing away at every might implement of war. Almost 4,500,000
carats of them this year . . . are known to speed countless tasks of war production”
(Ayer Agency Records, 1943). Ayer branded DeBeers as a patriotic, lawful, ethical
company while diamonds were branded with emotion and sentimental significance in
its advertisements aimed at the American public. The copy continued by explaining
that industrial diamond mining justified and more importantly required local jewelers
to keep a wide assortment of gemstone pieces available for purchase. The argument
followed that “gems defray much of the expense of mining, keeping down the cost of
war supply” (see Figure 6.).
To connect the jewelry with the tools, the ad bracketed tiny informative text around
the image, which read, “Diamond-tipped needles and dies (used in making electric
wire),” at the top with, “Woman’s diamond engagement ring, man’s brown diamond
ring, sweetheart symbol, all by Spaulding-Gorham, Chicago,” underneath. This
abstract sales pitch and plea for patriotic consumption was one of the first moments in
advertising history where luxury indulgence was masqueraded as civic duty. The ad
posited that diamonds in general, along with the popular “Sweetheart Symbol,” jewelry piece depicted in the photograph, bore double meanings during World War II:
“They are proud sources of love and comfort to young hearts far apart. And they are
the helpmeet of the fierce little fighting diamonds” (Ayer Agency Records, 1943).
This campaign and the decision by DeBeers to rely heavily on advertising and branding to make their gemstones both depression/recession-proof and wartime solvent
marked a turning point in the marketing of diamonds. By the late 1940s the slogan,
“Diamonds are forever,” which contained the meaning that DeBeers and its advertiser
originally wanted to instill, was installed and became iconic, carrying the company
through the turn of the century.
Regardless of DeBeers’ stalled mining practices and excessive supply during the
war, Ayer was encouraged to fabricate ties between diamond sales and war supplies in
the “Fighting Diamonds” campaign (Ayer Agency Records, 1943). An ad copy
claimed that the United (allied) Nations controlled mining within industrial diamondrich lands. During World War II, colonial (mostly “allied”) powers still ruled the areas
of Africa where diamond mines were concentrated. As public relations operatives for
DeBeers, Ayer rallied American citizens to buy gemstone jewelry as a patriotic act by
insisting falsely that additional industrial diamonds were needed in order to win the
war. The copy read that “United Nations” controlled “4.5 million carats of the hardest
substance known.”7 Industrial diamonds were framed as both invincible and in complete control of the Allied powers. Regardless of reality, ads posited that patriots
needed gemstone diamond sales to be the “helpmate” of the fighting diamonds.
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The “Fighting Diamonds,” campaign was so convincing in linking diamonds with
wartime victory, that a new series of ads was developed to refine the argument further.
Jewelers began expressing concern that such advertisements about diamonds might
confuse the American public. If ads highlighted the fact that diamonds were necessary
to the process of making weapons, patriotic consumers might believe they should
donate diamond jewelry pieces they already owned. In order to clarify to jewelers how
to sell diamonds effectively during wartime, ads that ran in trade publications included
scripted questions and answers that simulated conversations between jewelry professionals and gemstone customers. The headline of one such ad read, “My most precious
possession but grind it to powder if it will give him clearer vision” (Ayer Agency
Records, 1943). The ad included a photograph of a woman’s hands, decorated with her
wedding and engagement rings. Also shown were the tips of intricately embroidered
lace sleeves that evoked a bridal gown (see Figure 7).
The copy explained in the convenient Frequently Asked Questions format that jewelers must express to consumers that only new purchases would enable ongoing industrial diamond mining. And it clarified that gemstones were not capable of being
transitioned or ground into industrial diamonds. An explicit message to salespeople
was letterboxed apart from the Questions and Answers, reading, “Make sure your
customers understand these points about the dual position and meaning of diamonds
in the world at war” (Ayer Agency Records, 1943). Another similarly themed ad
asked, “Could these wings of my heart help tool the wings of his victory?” It featured a
tight body shot of a woman’s clavicle and bosom decorated with a diamond encrusted
sweetheart pin (see Figure 8).
The questions and answers were provided in full description along with another
reminder for jewelers to make sure customers understood the necessity of new diamond purchases. This rhetoric ran in direct contrast to DeBeers’ actual industrial diamond mining practices at the time. But because the public relations goal was to
maintain a positive image for DeBeers regardless of the US government’s anti-trust
laws and perspective on the cartel, Ayer executed their mission with the same fervor
they applied to their military work for the US Army.
While American military and labor propaganda during World War II encouraged
civilians to sacrifice, ration, and save, “Fighting Diamonds” ads assured would-be
buyers that their wartime gemstone diamond and jewelry splurges enabled the continuation of mining for industrial diamonds. But as evidenced in internal memos and
company documents, industrial diamond mining was not happening anyway. In the
ads, industrial diamonds were positioned as integral to the overall war effort as they
were being used in the manufacturing of the weaponry used by allied forces. These ads
aimed to dissolve American citizens’ consumer guilt over material indulgences in a
time of national conservation. The argument was potent: Luxury spending on diamond
rings, cufflinks, or other gifts contributed to the economic stability of the industrial
diamond-mining industry. To connect World War II propaganda, the rise of advertising consumer politics for commercial gain, and DeBeers’ “Fighting Diamond” advertisements this article featured a series of archival images from the N.W. Ayer and
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Figure 7. Grind it to powder. A jewelry trade magazine ad depicting a bride’s hands offered
a script, verbatim that coached jewelry salespeople to make clear to their customers that
gemstone diamonds cannot be transitioned into industrial diamonds to help the war
N W Ayer Advertising Agency Records in the Archives Center at the Smithsonian
Institution’s National Museum of American History. Summoning the interdisciplinary scholarship of advertising American historians, scholars of consumer culture, and
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Figure 8. The wings of my heart. A woman’s clavicle provided the backdrop for this ad,
which presented jewelry salespeople scripts to use when trying to sell diamonds as patriotic
purchases to customers
theorists of militarism, I found that although the “Fighting Diamonds” ads misled the
public, they bore sufficient, albeit abstract connections with the victory industries.
More so than other prominent firms of the period, Ayer had the industry legitimacy to
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carry forth a misleading wartime campaign. The firm enjoyed increased patriotic visibility thanks to the War Advertising Council, which furthered the wartime reputation
of the industry, writ large. More importantly, as the US Army branch’s ad agency,
Ayer possessed unique militarized credibility from serving their Department of
Defense client. Ads like the “Fighting Diamonds” were part of an increasingly prevalent strategy that co-opted elements of the consumer movements, equating democratic
participation with consumerism. In the history of advertising in the United States, the
ideology of consumerism promises that buying strategically can solve domestic problems. “Fighting Diamonds” further broadened that powerful claim, in arguing that
buying luxury could win wars. Utilizing the ideology of consumerism, the rhetoric of
militarism, and the promise of the consumer fix, N.W. Ayer and DeBeers recruited
citizen consumers to participate patriotically in solving an alleged foreign policy problem, and contributing to the broader World War II military effort in America.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article: The Smithsonian Institution generously funded research for
this article through a Predoctoral Fellowship Program at the National Museum of American
History in 2009.
Notes
1. The majority of the advertisement examples included in this article are primary sources
contained within the N. W. Ayer Advertising Records, Archives Center, National Museum
of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
2. DeBeers long viewed the United States as the most profitable market but had to shift strategies because of the economic circumstances of The Great Depression. For more information
on the company’s global branding strategies see client account records and information contained within oral history interview transcripts of the N W. Ayer Advertising Records at the
Smithsonian.
3. In 1938, the Roosevelt administration sought to curb monopolies by launching, “a thorough
study of the concentration of economic power in American industry and the effect of that concentration on the decline of competition,” (as announced in Roosevelt’s April 29, 1939 “Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies”) to be financed by Congress and administered by
the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, and the Securities and Exchange
Commission (Schlesinger, 1960). This was the primary reason DeBeers leaned on its advertising agency to conduct business matters on the US soil. The Roosevelt administration’s fight
against corporate monopolies did not stifle DeBeers’ desire to increase sales among American
consumers.
4. Even with the emotional justifications for war that the sinking of the Lusitania provided
for pro-interventionists, attitudes about American involvement in World War I remained
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divided. There were groups of isolationists and non-interventionists among citizens and within
Congress. Evidence of this can be seen in the congressionally blocked ratification of the
Treaty of Versailles. A group of senators known as the “Irreconcilables” opposed the League
of Nations because it provided the opportunity to declare war without US congressional
vote. (Stone, 1973).
5. The poster medium within the genre of propaganda differs enough from commercial print
advertisements that it bears mentioning. In the contexts of figures one and two, propaganda
aims to influence ideologically. The manifestation of that influence might involve behavioral changes, such as military enlistment, material conservation, or the purchase of “war
bonds.” Institutional and commercial advertisements typically contain less lofty and more
profit-motivated behavioral aspirations, even if ads might still contain ideological content.
Although ads and propaganda can be similar, I want to distinguish Figures 1 and 2 from the
figures that follow in this article, as the former are war propaganda and the latter are commercial advertisements with patriotic themes.
6. Although the Ad Council is careful in their self-written history, “Matters of Choice,” not to
attribute too closely specific agencies with specific campaigns or detail the level of participation and volunteerism from each individual firm, it is clear from reading articles discussing the legacy of Ayer and the history of the Ad Council that they were among the firms.
(Hodges, 1995).
7. To be clear, the United Nations was used interchangeably in the ads during World War II to
mean allied nations. Eventually the United Nations of today grew out of this alliance.
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Bio
Jessica L. Ghilani is an assistant professor of communication at the University of Pittsburgh
at Greensburg. She studies media technologies and the history of military advertising in the
United States. Her work has been published in Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and
Society and Minerva Journal of Women and War.
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