Don’t got a man? Get you some bling-bling anyway.

I was flipping through Harper’s Bazaar the other day at the library, and came across an ad for the “Right Hand Ring.” What the hell? Hey! Diamonds aren’t just for Smug Marrieds anymore, ladies! Step up and be the first to fall for this ad campaign aimed at suckering single women into buying pressed carbon!

From The Professional Jeweler:

The Diamond Promotion Service introduced its extensive marketing program for diamond right-hand rings to jewelers at the recent JCK Show-Las Vegas. The right-hand ring ad campaign, beginning this fall in consumer magazines, features the tag line “Women of the World, Raise Your Right Hand” aimed at inspiring women to take a fresh look at diamonds.

DPS is offering retailers a range of marketing material to complement and extend the consumer advertising campaign. These materials include postcards, ad slicks, acrylic sign, CD with six ad images, positioning copy line, four-color ad, Web banner, radio scripts and a newsletter story.

DPS created a diamond right-hand ring educational program for store owners/managers, which includes research and strategies to help maximize sales opportunities at the counter level and effectively train their sales associates.

Should retailers create ad campaigns featuring their own jewelry designs, they may use the “Women Of The World, Raise Your Right Hand. The Diamond Right Hand Ring” line. DPS authorized the diamond jewelry trade to use this campaign tag solely when promoting diamond right-hand rings. DPS will protect its rights to the full extent of the law.

Excerpts from the campaign: “Your left hand lives for love. The right hand lives for the moment.” “Your left hand loves candlelight. Your right hand loves the spotlight.” Priceless.

Now, I’m all for empowerment, as we know. All for a lady doin’ her own thang, makin’ her own choices, bein’ all she can be, even if those choices don’t jive with what she’s “supposed” to do. Hell, 22-year-olds aren’t supposed to “throw their lives away” and settle down with just one man anymore … it’s too “old-fashioned” and patriarchal and limiting and all the rest. But I did it anyway [to the surprise of many] because it was what I wanted to do.

I just think it’s interesting that yet another niche in the consumer market has leaped on single women and their so-called insecurities to make a little profit, all the while turning it around so that it seems like the empowered, I’m-my-own-woman thing to do. Guess it was just a matter of time.

August 30, 2003 | Filed Under auto-categorized