And hence you've proven the point: Marketing and advertising are inherently evil.

No real argument there! You probably detected a slight bit of distain in my phrasing to begin with. However, I do understand it as a normal course of operation within our society, and therefore DeBeers behavior is not unexpected. If we routinely accept psychological manipulation (read: advertisement), it's hard to be too upset with DeBeers for doing it exceptionally well. However, I suppose the reason many of us have empegs and Tivo's is to avoid that kind of psychological manipulation in the first place!