This week, the Diamond Producers Association, the group formed earlier this year by the world’s major miners, announced that it has tapped longtime jewelry industry marketer Sally Morrison as its new managing director of marketing, bringing her back to where she started in this industry.
Morrison spent years marketing diamonds at JWT during the De Beers’ days of A Diamond is Forever, Journey, the right-hand ring, etc.
After a short stint with Forevermark, she left in 2012 to head public relations for the London-based World Gold Council, doing much the same for the metal as she had for diamonds. While at the WGC, she developed what I think is one of the most forward-thinking initiatives in the jewelry industry, LoveGold.
To sum it up for those who aren’t familiar, LoveGold is a social media-centric marketing effort launched in 2013 to get consumers, particularly young consumers, interested in gold jewelry and to get them to understand the value of something that lasts in this very disposable age.
LoveGold has a beautiful, modern-looking website as well as a presence on all the major social media channels: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The photography is beautiful, the designs are on-trend and, perhaps most importantly, the conversation is taking place where millennials spend time: on social media.
The innovative initiative quickly caught the industry’s attention.
At the end of 2013, LoveGold found itself among the nominees for the 2014 Gem Awards but lost out to an entity with a slightly longer history, Tiffany & Co. That same year, LoveGold’s Academy Awards campaign generated more than 2 million impressions on Twitter and was highlighted as a success story on the social media site.
