Ads for British diamond firm banned over ‘real’ claims

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Adverts for a diamond producer have been banned for deceptive shoppers by not making it clear the gems are artificial.

Press and Instagram advertisements for Skydiamond in February final 12 months, in addition to its web site, featured the headline, “Say hello to the world’s first and only diamond made entirely from the sky.”

Smaller textual content beneath acknowledged: “We make diamonds using four natural ingredients, the sun, wind, rain and something we have too much of, atmospheric carbon. In doing so, our technology turns a negative into a positive. Now that we can mine the sky, we never need to mine the earth again.”

A “Frequently Asked Questions” web page included the query “Are Skydiamonds real diamonds?” and the reply: “Each Skydiamond is a perfectly formed real diamond.”

The Natural Diamond Council, who understood the merchandise have been laboratory-created diamonds, complained that the claims “Skydiamonds”, “diamonds”, “real diamonds” and “diamonds made entirely from the sky” within the advertisements have been deceptive.

The Sky Mining Company, buying and selling as Skydiamond, believed that the advertisements made clear that their diamonds weren’t mined from the earth and as such weren’t naturally occurring diamonds, known as pure diamonds.

They advised the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that they didn’t consider that the absence of the phrases “synthetic”, “laboratory-grown” or “laboratory-created” would inevitably lead a median client to be misled about their diamonds.

On the opposite, they believed that the extent of the qualifying info, graphics and visuals made available might solely lead a median client to conclude that their diamonds weren’t earth-mined, as they meant.

The firm mentioned a Skydiamond was a diamond, “chemically, structurally and optically”, and had precisely the identical composition and bodily properties of a pure diamond.

The ASA mentioned shoppers would perceive the phrase “diamond” in isolation to imply a mineral consisting of crystallised carbon that was naturally occurring.

It mentioned: “We considered that while some consumers may have been aware that synthetic diamonds could be manufactured or created in a laboratory, many would not.”

It added: “We understood that although synthetic diamonds had the same chemical and physical properties as mined diamonds, there were differences in their future value.

“We also considered that, whether a gemstone was natural or synthetic would be a key consideration for many consumers and was therefore material information.

“We therefore considered that ads for synthetic diamonds needed to make clear the nature of the product in order to avoid misleading consumers.”

The ASA concluded: “Because the ads did not make clear that Skydiamond diamonds were synthetic, we concluded that the claims ‘diamonds’, ‘diamonds made entirely from the sky’ and ‘Skydiamond’ were misleading.

“The ads must not appear again in the form complained about.”

The watchdog added: “We also told them not to use the claim ‘real diamonds’ to describe synthetic diamonds.”