Frances Gerety was the advertising copywriter responsible for the slogan ‘A Diamond is Forever’, which she created for the De Beers Diamond Company. The tagline is virtually as famous as Diamonds themselves and is still used in De Beers advertisements to this day.
- Name: Mary Frances Gerety
- Date of Birth: 1916
- Country of Birth: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
- Date of Death: 11th April 1999 Derby, Pennsylvania (age 83)
Mary Frances Gerety, known by those close to her as Frances, was born in 1916 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She graduated from the Charles Morris Price School of Advertising and later studied at the University of Pennsylvania. By 1947, Gerety was working for the advertising agency NW Ayers & Son, which De Beers had approached to help stimulate interest in Diamonds after the Great Depression (1929 to 1939) almost wiped out the sales of the jewel. She was the lead copywriter on the campaign and was tasked with creating a new tagline to encapsulate the eternal beauty and romance that Diamond represents.
Late one night, Gerety jotted down ‘A Diamond is Forever’ on a piece of paper, almost off-hand, and then presented it to her colleagues the following day. Initially, the agency was unsure whether to use it, but the slogan got the go-ahead and has been used ever since. In 1999, it was even named the best slogan of the 20th century by Advertising Age magazine. Gerety passed away in Derby, Pennsylvania, aged 83, on April 11, 1999.
DIAMONDS
