#RJEF2023: NDC takes to 360-degree digital retail positioning to retell the story of natural diamonds 

To sensitize the industry about the differentiation between grown and natural diamonds and the evolving trade opportunities, the NDC has created a 64-page, third-party assessed report which is available online, said Richa Singh, MD, India and the Middle East, Natural Diamond Council

Kolkata: As the world gravitates towards AI and a tech-first approach to marketing, traditional retailers have joined the movement to position themselves online. At the inaugural session of the Retail Jeweller East Forum themed ‘Are we future ready? Decoding the real potential of natural diamonds’, Richa Singh, Managing Director, India and the Middle East, Natural Diamond Council (NDC) discussed how the council is hand-holding retail partners to make their strongest mark in diamond jewellery online.

“Every luxury industry looks up to the strong bonding that Indian jewellers have. Jewellers are the first to learn about marriages in families and are part of a family’s most important celebrations. This makes them the biggest confidante of Indian families,” said Singh.

She announced that NDC has come up with a 64-page, third-party assessed report that keeps jewellers abreast of opportunities in the natural diamond trade. The report encourages retailers to tempt the target audience every quarter with new promotional strategies so that patrons of elite fashion brands also have natural diamond jewellery on their to-buy list. The report also demarcates and provides information about the separate category of lab-grown diamonds. NDC has collaborated with 90 jewellers for the report and has created social media assets with the same information, which is easily accessible across message-sharing platforms.

NDC has also gone ahead and promoted the works of the participating jewellers, and played a particularly significant role in plugging conversation starters on natural diamonds with the Amazon Prime Video show ‘Made in Heaven’ and ‘Koffee With Karan S7’ on Disney+Hotstar respectively. “Every celebrity wearing jewellery by every participating brand was duly promoted by the respective brands on their platforms. The deal for ‘Made in Heaven’ was done with NDC back in 2019, and a lot of preparations went behind planning the best possible promotion of jewellers. Through ‘Made in Heaven’, every jeweller got the chance to create PR campaigns around their jewellery spotted on the screen,” Singh stated. Talking about the Karan Johar talk show, Singh explained how Ranveer Singh’s complete look of 5-carat diamond earrings and him saying “Sindhis love their diamonds” trended for two months at a stretch on social media, sparking direct conversations with end-consumers.

During lockdown, NDC had taken the onus of building conversations around diamond jewellery that retail brands would usually avoid for lack of a direct sales call-to-action. Termed ‘Forces of Fashion’ and held in association with Vogue, NDC’s digital festival involved luxury couturier Sabyasachi Mukherjee on an interesting topic titled ‘What came first? Lehenga or jewellery?’, Singh recalled. Fuelling the discourse around Parisian red carpet fashion and the curiosity around it, NDC also invited the head of Vogue, red carpet stylists and Bollywood celebrities to talk about natural diamonds. Singh stated that one episode of Bollywood Housewives on Netflix had 1 million-plus views in which the actors talked about their love for natural diamonds.

“Global brands such as Cartier regularly served Indian Maharajas, who were connoisseurs of jewellery. When a 22-year-old aspirant of luxury jewellery from Cartier knows about this history, her trust in the glory of natural diamonds gets strengthened at an emotional level. That’s how we brought the conversation back to India’s perennial love for diamonds,” Singh added. From running ads about natural diamonds at Times Square, New York, during the pandemic, to involving global ambassadors talking about the CSR activities in mining regions such as Botswana, NDC talked about multiple mantras to follow while appealing to the Gen Z audience, she said. Digital-first exposure to fashion, augmented reality, AI personalisation, a catchy advertisement for a  time-starved audience, immediate gratification, customization and sustainability are a few touchpoints that, Singh said, will help jewellers serve customers of the future.

Written by Ashwin Bose

Retail Jeweller India Exclusive