If you were proposed to a hundred years ago, you might have been offered a simple gold ring or an heirloom from the family of your betrothed. Most likely, it wasn’t a diamond. But after Mary Frances Gerety wrote the words, “A Diamond is Forever” for De Beers Co., diamonds quickly became the go-to token of engagement in the US.

By the end of the century, ~80% of engagements involved a diamond. Today, 75 years later, as many as one in three people still can’t imagine getting engaged without one.

The most interesting thing isn’t that the campaign led people to want diamonds, it’s that it led people to believe that diamonds are the engagement. It created the sense of a timeless cultural tradition in just a few decades. De Beers wasn’t selling diamonds, it was selling a story.

Sometimes culture is something we create or inherit, and sometimes it’s something we’re sold. Either way, the stories that make up our culture are precious to us. Once we get attached, it can be extremely difficult to let go, no matter who is pulling the strings.