“After appearing on national TV, we had so much traffic to our website, it crashed for five minutes! Jill is a one woman phenomenon. The most professional and capable PR person I have ever had the privilege of working with. She gets results far above expectations and still has time to look after the little details. I cannot recommend her highly enough to anyone who wants to raise their profile or generate impactful exposure.”
Tobias Kormind, founder & CEO, 77 Diamonds
Tobias Kormind, founder and CEO of Europe’s largest online diamond jeweller, 77 Diamonds, approached PR Superstar after becoming a fan of the PR I had been doing for a rival. The Mayfair-based etailer has brought diamonds to the masses by selling bespoke engagement rings, wedding rings, and jewellery for the best prices in Britain – at up to 71% less than the High Street. 77 Diamonds has a workshop and showroom off Bond Street, London’s world-famous luxury quarter, with celebrity fans including supermodels, TV stars, MPs and high-profile businessmen.
I was briefed to deliver mass media coverage on TV and radio, in newspapers, magazines and online, including entrepreneur PR for Kormind and brand PR for 77 Diamonds, to raise awareness of the ecommerce business and its USPs. He had used numerous PR agencies since launching in 2006 and none of them had quite lived up to the mark.
I kicked off the PR campaign by securing multiple profile pieces on Kormind in the business pages, ranging from The London Evening Standard and The Mail on Sunday to The Sunday Times and The FT, where he talked about the story behind the creation of 77 Diamonds. Positive headlines included “The diamond geezer taking the shine off the Bond Street stalwarts” and “Online diamond seller 77 Diamonds turns in a polished performance”.
Journalists were given a rare glimpse behind-the-scenes of the UK diamond industry when they were invited to video and photograph 77 Diamonds’ workshop and its master craftsmen, including head jeweller Stephen Barnard who has 50 years experience in the industry. A journalist from The FT even spent an afternoon learning about the art of jewellery making and tried his hand at crafting a diamond ring – this resulted in a three-page spread in FT Weekend Magazine and a video on FT.com, pure PR gold! The Daily Mail broadcast live from the workshop via their Facebook page, with the video attracting over 111K views and 1.2K likes!
National TV was also a target – with coverage ranging from Sky News, which visited 77 Diamonds’ showroom, and ITV1 This Morning to global business channel CNBC and Bafta award-winning TV series Made in Chelsea. David Allen, Creative Director at 77 Diamonds, delivered a fun and informative “diamond masterclass” – with some of the world’s biggest jewels – to This Morning presenters Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield, gaining eight minutes of air time in front of its audience of 1M.
Kormind also gave 121 educational “diamond masterclasses” to fashion, lifestyle, personal finance, and consumer affairs journalists in return for features, including online articles with high authority back links to the 77 Diamonds website.
Other newsworthy hooks that I created and successfully sold in to the national media included a guided tour of the UK’s diamond centre, Hatton Garden, where journalists were given unrivalled access to the area’s diamond dealers, manufacturers and retailers, thanks to Kormind’s connections. In their articles, they compared Hatton Garden’s traditional jewellers with innovative online jeweller 77 Diamonds and described it as the modern face of the industry. The Guardian asked for exclusivity for the story.
