Gemfields Every Piece Unique Brings Coloured Gemstones to Life
Gemfields' "Every Piece Unique" is a 2018 global brand campaign created by DDB that uses animated CGI sculptures inside an art gallery setting to argue that each coloured gemstone, like each human being, possesses a character entirely its own.
Published in the United Kingdom and announced on 30 September 2018, with an official launch on 1 October 2018, the campaign represents Gemfields' most ambitious brand statement to date. Rather than presenting finished jewellery in the conventional luxury mode, the film invites viewers into a gallery where sculpted gemstone figures come alive, each one moving and behaving differently, embodying the natural variation that distinguishes coloured stones from the standardised grading systems that govern diamonds. The campaign carried a global scope, launching simultaneously across London, Shanghai, and India, with media placements spanning digital, social, print, Sky TV, British Airways in-flight entertainment, and public relations activations.
The creative agency DDB partnered with production companies Gutenberg Global, MPC, and FutureDeluxe to execute the film, with media planning and buying handled by Havas LuxHub Media, as reported by Little Black Book. The campaign was built from a single shoot designed to generate enough content to sustain the Gemfields brand story for two years, a production philosophy that shaped every creative decision from pre-production onward. In the United Kingdom, the campaign received a Clapboard Score of 73 out of 100, reflecting strong creative ambition and cross-channel distribution against a category not historically associated with large-scale brand filmmaking. Emily Dungey, Group Marketing and Communications Director at Gemfields, described the campaign as "a snapshot of who we are: it's fun, unexpected and non-conformist, but also gives an insight into some of the ways in which Gemfields strives to leave a positive and lasting impact."
Gemfields operates in the coloured-gemstone sector, a market characterised by significant fragmentation. According to GIA, coloured-stone mining and processing spans 47 countries across six continents, with production spread across numerous smaller operators rather than a handful of dominant companies. This structural reality means brand differentiation, rather than category dominance, is the primary competitive lever available to any single player.
In the United Kingdom, the luxury personal accessories market presents Gemfields with a consumer base that is both aspirational and increasingly values-conscious. The coloured-gemstone sector experienced a notable resurgence in the years surrounding 2018, according to reporting by nationaljeweler.com and lareserve-mag.com, driven in part by consumer appetite for products with traceable provenance and distinctive character. Gemfields, which operates the Kagem emerald mine in Zambia among other assets, was positioned to capitalise on this shift by making origin and uniqueness the centre of its brand communications rather than carat weight or cut precision.
The competitive environment in 2018 placed Gemfields alongside luxury conglomerates such as LVMH, whose jewellery houses including Bulgari and Chaumet command significant shelf presence in the UK market, as well as the Richemont Group, whose Cartier and Van Cleef and Arpels brands have long held authority in coloured stones. Against these rivals, Gemfields held no equivalent retail infrastructure or heritage positioning. The strategic response, executed through DDB, was to claim the idea of gemstone individuality before any competitor could, turning a mineralogical fact — that no two natural coloured stones are identical — into a brand narrative with emotional resonance. The campaign's targeting of London as a primary launch market reflects the city's role as both a luxury purchasing hub and a global media amplifier for the UK market.
The creative execution of "Every Piece Unique" centres on a single, sustained conceit: gemstones rendered as living sculptures inside an elegant gallery space, each one animated to express a distinct personality.
Production companies Gutenberg Global, MPC, and FutureDeluxe shared responsibility for bringing the concept to life, with MPC handling visual effects and FutureDeluxe contributing motion design, as documented by lbbonline.com. The result is a film in which CGI characters move with the irregular, organic quality that natural coloured stones actually possess — faceted forms that catch light differently at every angle, rendered in motion to suggest temperament and individuality rather than standardised perfection. The gallery setting is deliberate: it positions Gemfields' stones alongside fine art rather than alongside competing jewellery brands, reframing the purchase decision as one of cultural and aesthetic appreciation.
Claire Bowers, Managing Director at Gutenberg Global, stated: "We loved the brief from Gemfields to create a single campaign from one shoot which could deliver enough content to sustain the Gemfields story for two years." This production philosophy shaped not only the film but an entire ecosystem of assets distributed across digital, social, print, Sky TV, and British Airways in-flight entertainment channels, ensuring consistent creative expression across every touchpoint. The campaign's visual language drew a deliberate line of continuity from Gemfields' earlier brand work, including its 2014 campaign photographed by Peter Lindbergh, which had already established a precedent for treating gemstones in an art-directed, non-conventional manner, as noted by thejewelleryeditor.com. "Every Piece Unique" extended that lineage into motion and CGI, a significant escalation in production ambition. Production credits beyond Bowers and the named production companies are not fully documented in public sources.
No independently verified third-party performance audit of the "Every Piece Unique" campaign is publicly available. However, Gemfields has reported a set of distribution metrics that establish the campaign's scale in concrete terms.
According to gemfields.com, the campaign achieved 310 million total reach and impressions across its combined media channels, which included digital, social, print, Sky TV, British Airways in-flight entertainment, public relations, and brand activations. Gemfields also reported 7.4 million YouTube views by the end of 2018, according to gemfields.com, a figure that positions the film well above the average performance of luxury brand content in the same period. These numbers reflect both the breadth of the media plan, which Havas LuxHub Media executed, and the strength of the film's core idea as a piece of shareable content.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates several characteristics associated with durable brand effectiveness. The single-shoot, multi-year content model described by Claire Bowers represents an efficient production strategy that maximises creative investment across a sustained brand-building period rather than concentrating impact in a single window. The decision to launch simultaneously in London, Shanghai, and India gave the campaign genuine global presence while ensuring the United Kingdom remained the primary media market and editorial reference point. The Clapboard Score of 73 out of 100 for this campaign reflects its creative coherence and distribution reach, tempered by the absence of independently verified sales or brand-tracking data in the public domain.
"Every Piece Unique" is a 2018 global brand campaign by Gemfields, created by DDB, that uses animated CGI sculptures in a gallery setting to express the individual character of each coloured gemstone. It launched on 1 October 2018 in the United Kingdom, with simultaneous markets in London, Shanghai, and India.
DDB created the "Every Piece Unique" campaign for Gemfields. Production was handled by Gutenberg Global, MPC, and FutureDeluxe, with media planning and buying managed by Havas LuxHub Media, as reported by lbbonline.com. The campaign was published in the United Kingdom in October 2018.
Gemfields distributed "Every Piece Unique" across digital, social, print, Sky TV, British Airways in-flight entertainment, and public relations activations. According to gemfields.com, the campaign reached 310 million total impressions globally, with the United Kingdom serving as the primary launch market and media reference point.
The campaign was built from a single shoot designed to generate content sustaining the Gemfields brand story for two years, as stated by Claire Bowers, Managing Director at Gutenberg Global. CGI production by MPC and FutureDeluxe animated gemstones as distinct sculpted characters inside an art gallery environment.
Gemfields reported 7.4 million YouTube views for the "Every Piece Unique" film by the end of 2018, according to gemfields.com. No independent third-party audit of this figure is publicly available, though the number reflects strong distribution across digital channels in the United Kingdom and globally.
"Every Piece Unique" continues a creative lineage established by Gemfields' 2014 campaign, photographed by Peter Lindbergh, which treated raw emeralds in an art-directed, non-conventional manner, as noted by thejewelleryeditor.com. The 2018 campaign escalated that approach into CGI motion filmmaking, deepening the brand's story-led positioning in the UK market.
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