NO HIDDEN AGENDA

OUR CLIENT

Overseas Diamonds was one of the world’s best known cutters and polishers of loose diamonds based at the heart of the global diamond industry in Antwerp. Their most valuable diamonds were sold to jewellers in the world’s major markets under the brand name isee2. Jewellers that joined the “isee2 program” were provided with a comprehensive support package that included marketing, staff training and a revolutionary device that helped them sell more premium diamonds. The device was used at point of sale to build trust with consumers by helping them judge the quality of diamonds for themselves.

 

THE CLIENT'S CHALLENGE

 

Overseas Diamonds recognised that they were facing a major branding problem which was impacting upon their business. Several years previously, the company had had the vision to invent a simple Apple Mac based technology to enable consumers to compare the beauty performance of one loose diamond against another in real time at point of sale in the retailer’s showroom. This put consumers in charge of the evaluation process and cut through the industry jargon of the 4 Cs (cut, clarity, colour and carat) to concentrate upon what really matters – beauty performance.

 

The law of unintended consequences had led the industry to associate the isee2 brand more with the software and the technology behind the point of sale evaluation device than with the fact that the company was producing the world’s best and most beautiful loose diamonds.

 

The Chief Executive knew that he had to re-position the isee2 offering but did not have any trained marketers in house. NOHA was able to provide him with an expert and cost effective solution to his challenge.

 

OUR SOLUTION

 

Overseas Diamonds were seeking to start the process of recruiting a full time Marketing Director to work with us at the time of our appointment. We were able to place one of our senior Client Directors into the organisation providing strategic vision and regular day to day advice to the Chief Executive thereby avoiding the need to pay for in-house and agency overhead in redeveloping the brand and managing the process.

 

Our initial work was to identify the isee2 point of difference (“we make measurably better diamonds”) and then to express it in consumer facing and emotionally more appealing language (“Beauty beyond compare”). This allowed us to strike the right balance between the true meaning of diamonds (beauty) and the competitive proof of isee2’s ability to outperform its competitors in the capture and pure expression of beauty (the point of sale evaluation device).

 

Once the proposition was signed off, NOHA’s Client Director was able to split his time cost efficiently between the Client’s Antwerp office and NOHA's team in the UK.

 

In Antwerp, he built a close understanding of the company, the market and the challenges isee2 faced, and worked as part of the client team.  In the UK, he was able to work closely with our creative teams to create both b2b and b2c communications, translated into several languages.