How to choose a jewellery marketing agency: make it describe the piece before it sells the piece

The Social Target, which publishes this, is an agency with an interest in your choice. We run Meta and TikTok ads for Chofa Jewelry, a Miami maker of lucite pieces, described in our published case study. That is our only published jewellery work, and it is a lucite label, not a gold or diamond one, so it does not show that we meet the tests below. What it does show is where the weight of the copy fell. The case page says the Meta ads were built around hand-poured wearable art rather than discounts or urgency, and that each piece is hand-poured, sculpted and polished one at a time. The question it leaves for any agency: which material or making claim will carry my ads, and what will you check before it runs? Use the three phases below in one meeting. Each gives you what to ask, what to listen for, and what to ask next when the reply is vague.

Phase one, the opening minutes: names, and who signs off the words

Start by asking for names. Who will write your copy, run your account and sign off your claims once the contract is signed? Not the pitch team: the people, with the hours each will give you every week and a named stand-in. If an agency will not name people in the first ten minutes, take that as its answer for month three too.

Listen for specific roles and specific people. If they say "a dedicated team", ask: "Which names, and can I meet the person who will write my product descriptions?" If they say a founder stays involved, ask how many hours a week that is and who covers when the founder is away.

Then set the test that decides the meeting. Bring one real product page, such as a gold ring, a lab-grown pendant or a silver chain, and ask the agency to rewrite its metal and stone lines on the spot, saying where each word comes from. You are not marking the prose. You are watching for the question "what is it actually made of?" A careful agency asks it before writing a word. If they start writing without asking, ask: "What would you need from me to be sure that line is true?"

Phase two, the middle: metal, stone and making

The middle of the meeting tests whether the agency knows what your pieces are made of. GOV.UK says it is very difficult to know what an item of jewellery is made of just by looking at it or touching it. It adds that online selling of jewellery increases the risk to consumers. An agency writes those descriptions into ads and listings, so its words are the ones a buyer relies on, and the rules below show what a false description risks.

Start with metal, and with one piece: an illustrative 6-gram silver pendant. Keep it in mind through the UK rules. The Hallmarking Act 1973 makes it an offence, in the course of a trade or business, to apply to an unhallmarked article a description indicating it is wholly or partly made of gold, silver, platinum or palladium, subject to the Act's exemptions. GOV.UK guidance sets the weight exemptions: a hallmark is not compulsory below 1 gram of gold, 7.78 grams of silver, 0.5 gram of platinum or 1 gram of palladium. The same page says an item over the threshold sold unhallmarked breaks the law, in a shop or online. The exemption removes the hallmark duty, not the duty to be truthful: the Act also treats a false description of fineness in an advertisement, other than by understating it, as misleading. GOV.UK adds that online retail sites must also prominently display explanatory information about the hallmark, using Dealers Notice A or B.

Then put the pendant to the agency: "What do you write about its metal, and what do you ask me first?" Listen for three questions back: whether it is marked, to what fineness and who made it. "925" should appear only once the agency knows. If they say "it is under the weight limit, so no rules apply", ask: "Does the description still have to be true?" Then ask who will add the dealers' notice to your store when they rebuild it.

In the US, where the trade writes jewelry, the guidance is the FTC's Jewelry Guides, 16 CFR Part 23, amended in July 2018. They are not a licensing rule. The text says they do not confer any rights on any person, though the FTC may act under the FTC Act if a claim is inconsistent with them. They also cover labelling, advertising and all other marketing. Among their examples of descriptions that may mislead is the unqualified word "gold" for anything not composed throughout of fine 24 karat gold. Another is "vermeil" for anything other than a base of sterling silver plated with gold of not less than 10 karat fineness, at a minimum thickness.

Have them write one line for a gold-plated ring and one for a vermeil ring, and explain the difference. If they say the supplier's wording is fine, ask: "And if the supplier is wrong?"

Now stones, and here you can look before you ask. Open any stone ad in the agency's portfolio and read the headline on its own, without the caption or the page behind it. If the word diamond stands alone on a lab-grown stone, you already know part of the answer. In the meeting, give them a lab-grown ring and ask for the headline, the caption and the product title. The qualifier should sit in the ad itself, not only on the page behind the click. If they say "the product page explains it", ask: "What does the ad say?"

Demand is why the wording matters. A YouGov UK article of 7 May 2025 reports a poll of 2,079 adults in which 29 percent said they are likely to buy a lab-grown diamond in the future. That measures intent to buy, not how people read the word diamond. UK and US sources point the same way on how to describe lab-grown diamonds.

On 13 May 2026 the UK Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint about two paid Meta ads from a jewellery retailer. The ads were for synthetic diamonds. It said consumers would understand the word "diamond" in isolation to mean a naturally occurring mineral. It added that the information on the website was material and should have been included upfront in the ad. It found the ads breached CAP Code rules 3.1, 3.3 and 3.9, which makes this a ruling under the advertising code, not a statute.

In the US, FTC staff wrote in 2019 that the Guides caution marketers not to use the name of any precious stone, including diamonds, to describe a simulated or laboratory-created stone unless the name is immediately preceded by a clear disclosure. The same post says the Guides apply in social media advertising. It adds that the FTC sent warning letters to eight companies. Some of those letters cite claims made on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Three more material checks belong here. First, treatments. The Guides say a seller should disclose a gemstone treatment that is not permanent, that creates special care needs or that significantly affects value. For online sales, the disclosure belongs in the description of the product. Ask what the agency does when your supplier says a stone is treated. Second, photography. The Guides note that a depiction of a diamond or other gemstone in greater than its actual size may mislead unless the true size is disclosed. Ask to see a macro-shot ad and where the real size appears beside it. Third, making. The Guides say a product should be called handmade only if the entire shaping, forming, finishing and decoration was done by hand labour and manually controlled methods. If your brand says handmade, ask how the agency would check that before putting it in a headline.

Creative belongs in this phase as one more material test. Ask how they test worn shots against macro detail, and what they do when the best-performing ad is the one with the weakest claim. The answer you want is that the claim file wins and the ad is rewritten.

Phase three, the close: term, exit and the claims file

Ask for the minimum term, the notice period, any fee for leaving and a written list of what you take with you when you go. A short first term with monthly notice makes sense for a brand that has not worked with the agency before, because it keeps both sides honest while you learn each other's habits. If they say "we agree that later", ask them to put it in the contract now.

Then the jewellery-specific clause. Ask that the contract names who signs off claims about metal, stone, origin and making, and that the approved-claims record, with the source for each claim, is handed to you when you leave. Ads can outlive the relationship, and the record is what lets you defend or fix the words in them. If they say they keep no such record, ask how they would prove a claim if a customer or a regulator asked.

Where The Social Target fits, and where it does not

We suit an established jewellery brand that already sells, has its material facts written down, and wants paid social and store groundwork for jewellery brands. We are probably not right for a brand with no revenue yet, or one shopping on the cheapest quote. We are not right for a brand that wants an agency to decide what its metal and stone claims may lawfully say: we cannot give you legal clearance, and you should not rely on any marketing agency for it, so check yours with your local trading standards service or a solicitor. And because our published jewellery work is a lucite label, a brand selling hallmarked gold or certified diamonds will find no published work of ours in those materials. If no agency on your list passes phase two, hiring none is a fair outcome; use the time to put each piece's metal, fineness, stone origin and treatments in one document. If handmaking is your story, read how to market a craft-led brand without making it sound cheap before any meeting.

If the fit note above leaves you unsure which side of it your brand falls on, tell us about your business; where we are the wrong agency for your materials, you will hear that from us.