A Necessary Luxury is a rhetorical analysis of the advertisement below, created by the diamond monopolist, De Beers:
Companies spend millions and millions of dollars each year on advertisements in hopes of receiving that money and more from product sales. What makes certain advertisements successful, while others fail? Rhetoric. I enjoyed analyzing advertisements and getting behind the mentality of De Beers. Figuring out what an advertisement meant was like solving a secret code. My major has required me to take several economics classes, and the most interesting aspect of this paper was the role the economy played in how De Beers formatted their advertising campaigns. What I was learning about the Great Depression in my macroeconomics class tied in well with the research I did for the paper. Due to my interest in the subject, I had no problem comprehending articles and doing research for my paper. Writing this paper was engaging, not torturous.
Besides correcting the few grammatical errors in my paper, I tried to make the paper more analytical and relate more to the rhetoric terms we discussed in class. I had done enough research, but needed to make claims about the advertising campaign.
““A diamond is forever,” has been called the most recognized and effective advertising campaign of the 20th century by the prestigious magazine, Advertising Age. Diamond engagement rings are a symbol of the eternal love between a man and a woman, but without the lone company that drives and dominates the diamond industry, the diamond would have a different meaning to the modern world (Kaplan). De Beers, the diamond monopolist, has utilized their advertisements over the years to enforce a principle fashioned to generate demand for their product. In response to the Great Depression, De Beers designed an advertising campaign to save itself from the drastic drop in diamond sales and then revamped this campaign, by altering its audience, with the recent recession of 2008 creating the accepted modern definition of true and enduring love.”
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