RAPAPORT... Despite the fears of diamond industry leaders, there are signs that the movie “Blood Diamond” may have little effect on the bottom line.
If the recent cinematic past is any cue, then the upcoming Warner Bros. movie “Blood Diamond” may have little effect on diamond sales, despite the fears of industry leaders. Nonetheless, officials from two major companies that were past subjects of critical movies have recommended that the diamond industry continue to do exactly what it is already doing: get out the facts about the steps that have been taken to stem trade in conflict diamonds, despite the risk associated with attracting still more attention to the movie.
“Blood Diamond” — which is set in 1999 Sierra Leone, during a brutal civil war fueled by the diamond trade — is hardly the first movie to depict an industry or company in a negative light. Previous examples include the 2004 documentary “Super Size Me,” in which the health of director Morgan Spurlock deteriorates as he spends 30 days eating at McDonald’s, and “The Insider,” a 1999 movie about a top scientist at the Brown & Williamson tobacco corporation who reveals that the manufacturer not only was aware that cigarettes are addictive and harmful, but that it worked to make them more addictive.
WHAT DIFFERENCE does it make?Despite the extensive publicity those movies received, they, and others like them, did not actually effect change, maintains Professor Richard Walter, chairman of the graduate screenwriting program at the University of California, Los Angeles, film school.
“What’s different as a result of ‘Super Size Me’ or ‘The Insider’?” asks Walter. “Nothing.”
“My guess is, if past is prologue, it’s not going to have a very big effect,” says Walter about “Blood Diamond,” which stars big-name actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly. “I don’t think that movies have all that much influence. I think they are influenced much more than they influence.”
Other recent media examples — including the Nicolas Cage movie “Lord of War,” the Kanye West song “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” and the nonfiction book The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit and Desire by Tom Zoellner — have depicted trade in illicit diamonds with no apparent effect on the industry’s bottom line. But diamantaires contend that “Blood Diamond” — which puts the issue of diamond-funded violence “front and center,” as Gareth Penny, the managing director of DeBeers, put it — could be a different set of stones entirely.
“It’s going to be a big film. It’s going to perhaps win an Oscar,” Jonathan Pudney, the marketing director of consumer confidence at the Diamond Trading Company (DTC), predicted at the 32nd World Diamond Congress this past June. “It has a title that perhaps scares us all.”
The December 8 release date is of particular concern to the diamond industry because it coincides with the Christmas season, when a large proportion of diamonds are typically sold.
Penny did acknowledge the possibility that “Blood Diamond” might not have much of an effect on the diamond industry, but says the industry has to be prepared nevertheless.
“What we don’t want to do is just hope it doesn’t [have a significant impact],” he says. “I don’t think any well-organized business just hopes.”
MAKING CHANGESGiven the movie’s title of “Super Size Me,” one of the most suggestive changes in the fast-food industry since the film’s release is that McDonald’s has eliminated supersizing. But while the movie did put unhealthy eating habits in the headlines, a McDonald’s official and two independent restaurant industry experts say the company’s menu changes had nothing to do with the film.
“As tempting as it might be to see cause and effect, I don’t think it’s there,” says Dennis Lombardi, executive vice president of the WD Partners restaurant consultant firm. “My opinion is any action from McDonald’s was in response to general consumer trends, and not the movie.”
Walt Riker, vice president of corporate communications for McDonald’s, says the chain introduced entrée salads the year before “Super Size Me” was released and that low consumer interest spurred a late 2003 order to eliminate the extra-large Supersize portions, although they were not phased out in the U.S. until 2004.
So has “Super Size Me” affected McDonald’s? “The facts show that it absolutely hasn’t,” says Riker. “We’re in the midst of the greatest business results we’ve had in our history.” The company has reported 42 consecutive months of positive sales growth.
Mark Smith, the spokesman for R.J. Reynolds — which has merged with Brown & Williamson since “The Insider” came out — noted the difficulty of distinguishing any effects of the film from the pre-existing climate of antitobacco hostility.
Stan Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, contends that “the movie contributed to broad public understanding about just how evil the tobacco industry is.”
But, Smith points out, “The Insider,” starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe, was released after leading tobacco manufacturers signed a 1998 legal settlement granting 46 U.S. states $246 billion. “I’m not sure you can accurately measure what impact [“The Insider”] had because the tobacco companies had already been dragged through the courts,” says Smith. “This movie was following on the heels of that, so any amount of negativity coming from [the movie] would just be incremental.” Asked whether he thought the movie had played a role in the public outcry against the tobacco industry, Smith responds “the movie had basically no effect.”
CALLING ATTENTION
Smith warns that an aggressive fact campaign could end up attracting more attention to “Blood Diamond” than it would receive on its own. “We did draw a lot of attention to the movie [“The Insider”],” he says. “It probably created more interest in the movie than the norm would have been.”
Despite the risk, Smith and Riker agree on the need to publicize relevant facts — especially those from third-party sources — in an effort to counter the film. “Probably the most important thing is to simply get out the facts and make sure they’re solid and well-researched, and use facts to counter any misperceptions there might be,” says Riker.
The World Diamond Council (WDC) has already begun a campaign to do precisely that. The website diamondfacts.org is meant to educate retailers, consumers and the media about the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), which was launched in 2003 to keep the diamond trade from funding violence.
Perhaps the most salient statistic about the KPCS is that it has cut down global trade in conflict diamonds from about 4 percent at the turn of the millennium to less than 1 percent today, according to diamond industry leaders. Despite the advances, though, industry leaders and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) alike are urging the diamond business not to rest on the laurels of its achievements to date.
“I think we agree that it’s definitely gotten better, but there are still loopholes out there; there are still conflict diamonds,” says Corinna Gilfillan, lead campaigner for Global Witness, an NGO advocating an end to conflict diamonds. “We want to make sure that diamonds never again contribute to conflict.”
Eli Izhakoff, chairman of the WDC, calls on the diamond industry to make sure that every stone purchased is untainted by violence. “If we achieve that,” he says, “we won’t have to worry about these movies that are coming out.”
Article from the Rapaport Magazine - December 2006. To subscribe click here.