At NRF, this exhibitor’s lure was a free 2-carat diamond…but where is it now?

There were, sadly, no Oompa-Loompas at the recent NRF conference in New York, but the spirit of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was alive and well on the trade show floor. Reminiscent of the 1971 film (and the 1964 Roald Dahl novel), where those who found golden tickets in their chocolate bars could tour a magical candy factory, One Source, a technology solutions company, ran a promotion centered around a 2-carat diamond.

One Source placed nearly 3,000 jewelry boxes in rooms across five hotels where attendees stayed. One contained a lab-grown real diamond worth $1,100, but the rest—wah-wah—were fake. Only by coming to Booth 1846, which was staffed by One Source Event Manager Angela Wright, who’d conceived the promotion, could attendees determine if theirs was the real diamond.

To learn more, including the surprising way it all turned out, we asked Wright to walk us through it.

The challenge

It’s all about the leads, which One Source measures as attendees who offer their badges for scanning and can be contacted post-conference to possibly ink deals.

“We’re a small company at a huge show like NRF, where you’ve got SAP and T-Mobile, and people like that that have these massive, 80-by-80[-foot] booths,” Wright told Retail Brew. “They’re automatically going to draw people in, and we’re just a little 10-by-10.”

The task for Wright was as simple as it was daunting: “What’s the wackiest idea I could come up with that was going to really get people’s attention and drive them to the booth?”

When One Source last exhibited at NRF in 2023, it got 33 leads. Its goal for this show was more than seven times that: 250.

So, no pressure.

The concept

They’re forever. They’re a girl’s best friend. They’re in the sky with Lucy. But what do diamonds have to do with a tech-solutions company?

“One of the things that we always talk about with One Source is, ‘We bring clarity to your technology stack,’” said Wright. “And that’s how the diamonds came up.”

Knowing she could have swag placed inside attendees’ hotel rooms, “I thought…if I had a little bag in my room and had a cubic zirconia in it that could possibly be a real diamond, I would go by the booth to have it checked out.”

The production

Once she’d procured 3,000 fake diamonds (cost: $2,500) and one real one, she and two other team members hunkered down in the company’s conference room. The real diamond and imposters were placed in fancy jewelry boxes with bows, then tucked into little gift bags with an explanatory card.

“In retail technology, not every bit of sparkle equals real value,” the card began. “Bring your stone to Booth #1846 on Level 1 at NRF to see if you’ve found the genuine article.”

To assemble everything in that conference room, it took Wright and her colleagues three days.

“When we were doing it, I looked at my boss, and I said, ‘If I ever come up with a kooky idea like this again, tell me to shut up,’” she said.

The conference

The NRF conference drew a record 41,000 attendees—37% of whom identified as at least a VP, including 13% who were CEOs, presidents, or owners—just the sort of big shots One Source wanted to hook.

Even Wright didn’t know where the real diamond ended up, and the One Source booth had a gem testing kit where she could demonstrate that it turned her own diamond ring blue, but not the fakes.

One Source’s goal, again, was to scan 250 badges over the three-day conferences. They scanned 389.

“It worked beyond our wildest dreams,” Wright said.

She’s working with the sales team on follow-up emails and scheduling meetings. Signing even one contract will make it all worthwhile.

“Typically one deal…more than pays for what I spent to go do all this stuff at the show,” Wright said.

And the winner is…

No one showed up at the booth with the real diamond, or contacted One Source subsequently to check if the one they took home was real.

Wah-wah.

The $1,100 gem could have been—gulp—thrown away in a hotel room wastebasket and be in a landfill somewhere. But if you attended the conference, and still have the One Source box, here’s a clue: For the real diamond, Wright highlighted “Booth #1846” on the explanatory card and made a small blue dot inside the box.

If it does turn up, Wright has a certificate of authenticity for its owner. If it doesn’t, it’s not a Hollywood ending, but still a decidedly happy one for a promotion that shattered its goal.

“I always kind of suspected that the real one might not show up,” Wright said. “But it was a risk we were willing to take to make the impact that we wanted to make.”