Every Kiss Begins With Kay… And Her Husband’s Machete-Severed hand
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So I’m watching basketball all weekend, and I’m watching the USC-Kansas game tonight, and I just can’t help but repeatedly thinking
“Am I going crazy, or are there a hell of lot more commercials hawking diamonds this year than any other year I can remember?”
That’s when I put 2 and 2 together. Today is December 4th, and what happens this weekend?
Blood Diamond - coming to a theater near you, December 8th!
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I guess the diamond industry is trying to be proactive and get guys off their procrastinating butts to buy the jewelry now, before a couple million of them end up in theaters with their wives, watching a probable Academy Award contender showing the dark underbelly of the diamond trade.
Of course I have no evidence of this marketing blitz, but from observation it appears to be the case. Maybe they ramp it up further to try to counteract the negative publicity from the movie, or maybe they pack it in and wait a full two months for America’s attention span to completely recycle.
Random trivia:
1. As you probably know, diamonds are nearly worthless and can be manufactured.
2. De Beers is a fun little outfit. For most of the 20th century they controlled the worldwide diamond trade and kept prices high by (1) creating an artificial scarcity of diamonds, and (2) by implementing a highly effective marketing campaign.
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With any other product - medicine, gas, twinkies, toilet plungers… they probably would have been drawn and quartered. But since this America… where marketing is king…
3. … they were given an award. In a year 2000 survey, the slogan “A Diamond is Forever” was chosen as the greatest marketing slogan of the 20th century. Now, I happen to think this is roughly equivalent to casinos using “best customer” trophies to reward the guys who drop 6 months of mortgage payments playing Caribbean Stud, and that anyone who buys into it should feel like a complete boob, but…
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4. … as you’re probably guessing by now, RFS his ownself has never actually had the conversation where he tries to convince a future Mrs. RFS that
“I love you so much that instead of some stupid rock I want to give you these AAA municipal bonds… IN YOUR VERY OWN BROKERAGE ACCOUNT! Isn’t that fantastic?!?!”
“What do you mean it’s not?”
“And why are you holding my wallet over the toilet?”
“Well… how about if we gave them a catchy slogan like ‘Tax-Free Cash Flow… from an MBIA-Insured Security with Excellent Duration, Positive Convexity, and a Sinking Fund… Is Forever’?”
“I’m just gonna head to the mall for a little while.”
Popularity: 6% [?]
I have my War Face on tonight for the A&M-L.S.Who game.
AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Comment by Shooter Flatch — December 5, 2006 @ 11:37 am
Shooter isn’t much of a payer attentioner, is he? Diamonds, not A&Ms. And, for the record, I hate those Kay commercials. That is all.
Comment by derrich — December 6, 2006 @ 10:15 am