DeBeers’ “Fighting Diamonds”

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.

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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

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 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). 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.”

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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

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 war ⁵ (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 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 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 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 now-ubiquitous 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 step-by-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.

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 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).

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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

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 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 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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Figure 4.

Diamonds of War. DeBeers’ agency, Ayer coined militaristic slogans of patriotism like “Diamonds of War” to assert diamonds’ participation in “victory industries”

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).

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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

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 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 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 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.).

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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

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 diamond-rich 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.

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).

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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

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).

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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

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 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 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 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.