mind above marketing

Marriage.

Whether or not you agree with it, most of us reading this will do it at least once in our lives — and there’s not a single thing wrong with that if it’s what you want to do. However, if you do decide to participate in this ritual that’s singular to our species then you might want to take note of the colossal marketing machine that goes into the cultural institute; it’s truly overwhelming. (This is a realm that many people will defend venemously. Please note that I am in no way making the statement that marriage is bad — I am only pointing out how effective the marketing side of it is. If this makes you uncomfortable then you might not want to read on.)

I’m going to focus mostly on the most obvious of marriage-related marketing fabrications: Diamonds.

 This is a subject that I could devote pages to, but I’ll summarize the  politics of it as quickly as I can:

 Diamonds are hardly rare; in fact, the exorbitant cost of diamonds has  much more to do with a  chokehold on the market than the gemstone  itself. The De Beers company has had a monopoly  control of almost  the entire diamond market for  virtually all of the 20th century, and as  much as 60%  after the year 2000 (when Russia and Canada got in on  the action). Up until 2000 they had monopoly  control over worldwide  production of diamonds and  therefore created their astronomically  over-priced  worth. They withheld and still withhold immense  stockpiles of the gem to prevent over-saturation of the market which  would bring prices down.

“How else would 2 months salary last a lifetime?” - De Beers ad.

The tradition of a man giving a woman a diamond engagement ring is entirely the result of a De Beers advertising campaign that started in the 1930s (and continues to this day), to encourage diamond sales. The advertising firm N.W. Ayer created an international marketing campaign that put forth the completely new idea that a diamond was a necessary ingredient for marriage. Not only that, but they convinced people that a man was required to spend a huge percentage of his salary on said diamond. That’s right, the myth of a man needing to spend an entire two month’s salary on a fairly  common gem to somehow prove his love was planted exclusively in 1947 by an advertising campaign from the world’s singular diamond cartel. 

Think for a second of how shocking this is: marketing for diamonds has forged an actual falsehood into a solid tradition of our society and others’. Think I’m exaggerating? Remember: the tradition of the diamond engagement ring did not exist before the De Beers ad campaign in the early/mid 1900s.

Now think about how many other so-called traditions that were/are simply ad executives’ inventions yet are engrained in your every day life. Also consider how much of our culture is actually created when advertising becomes one of the central founts of said culture. Think about why a man has to spend two months worth of his salary on a rock that is not actually very valuable and has no historical tradition behind it besides an ad campaign from the industry that supports it. Think about the accepted “fact” that a diamond engagement ring is a necessary part of the marriage process. All of this is the direct result of marketing, and shows precisely how it can take such a firm hold in any culture, especially in a capitalistic culture such as ours. If you’ve taken part in it, not to worry: every single one of us is affected by marketing in one way or another.

I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with most of this diamond business, but I believe that closely examining the effect of marketing helps get to the core of why we remain so fascinated with things like this shiny rock. I also believe that marketing is one of the prime reasons that marriage often becomes more about the material aspects of the ceremony than about the what the ceremony itself means. All you have to do is take one look at a magazine like this to see it clearly in action:

Again, none of this is me putting down marriage or marriage ceremonies in the least; I’ve been to some truly beautiful ones myself. I don’t subscribe to the idea that being aware of these things is being negative. I instead see it as being realistic, and if one is confident in one’s own set of morals and ethics then one can examine these things in more of an objective manner as opposed to reactive. Plus, if you’re truly aware of the marketing machine that we all live in then you can’t help but notice that not one single stone (or rock) goes unturned.