This Season’s Jewelry Retailer Holiday Campaigns: Toying with Emotions
by Christina Lee on December 11th, 2008
This holiday season, economic analysts have watched spending on luxury goods decline, deeming such behavior as one telltale sign of an ongoing recession. Meanwhile, many jewelry retailers are having previously unforeseen difficulties in selling to consumers shopping conservatively.
By the end of November, Blue Nile, De Beers, and Tiffany’s – some of the industry’s Goliaths – had all reported sales declines with the economic downturn to blame. As a result, while most other retailers reduced their yearly forecasts, others have experimented with new marketing campaigns that play with customers’ heartstrings:
Stuller
Along with its Red Box Diamond brand, this Louisiana-based manufacturer and distributor is also supplying its own marketing campaign that reminds the customer of Diamond Moments – a birthday, an anniversary, a milestone – in which its jewelry would serve as a meaningful gift.
“We want to create demand,” said Stanley Zale, vice president of diamonds, to National Jeweler. “We want to create markets. We’re not waiting for someone to do it.”
Until December 31, Stuller is also encouraging customers to submit their own Diamond Moments story, for a chance to win a pair of diamond stud earrings. Claudia Evans Stuller, the company’s business development director, has also appeared on home makeover show Designing Spaces to promote the campaign and contest.
JCPenney
“Diamonds have always been a girl’s best friend, but men don’t always remember how much women enjoy receiving diamond jewelry for the holidays,” said Beryl Raff, executive vice president of fine jewelry, in a statement. As a hard-hitting reminder, the retailer launched BewareoftheDoghouse.com.
Its main feature is a four-minute video, telling the story of a man banished from his home after he gave his wife a dual-bag vacuum cleaner as a gift. He ends up in the "doghouse," where men like himself repent after such thoughtless gift-giving. In its cliffhanger ending, the camera pans in on a diamond necklace.
With such sentiment in mind, women visiting the Web site can also warn their significant others that they deserve a “Doghouse” lesson. Luckily for such men, women can also note through these e-mail notifications a way out: one of six JCPenney diamond gifts they’d prefer to receive.
Bailey’s Fine Jewelry
Since August, Bailey’s Fine Jewelry have scattered its trademark black-and-white striped gift boxes with red bows in the North Carolina towns of its three stores: Raleigh, Greenville, and Rocky Mount. As an attached note indicates, anyone who stumbles across them gets “finders keepers” on the jewelry gift tucked inside.
Trey Bailey, director of operations, thought that such gifts – with values ranging from $20 to $100 – would help generate more business. If anything else, the campaign has proven to generate buzz quickly. Cecilia Upchurch, the first to find a Bailey’s gift, told the story of how she found a box to her friends, church members, and family through its Web site, according to The News and Observer.