Celebrating a 120 Year Journey

The first Sterns store was opened in Johannesburg in 1896 by Austrian immigrant, Joseph Stern. He believed that with the combination of quality and craftsmanship, one could create the perfect piece of jewellery. This core value has carried Sterns through all these years, helping it surpass the 120 year mark. In celebration of this special birthday, Sterns asked Techsys to create a campaign in honor of this notable anniversary. The campaign needed to be both unique and engaging, and needed to give users the chance to share stories of their own.

To give justice to their impressive achievements over the last 120 years, we created an interactive timeline that allows users to explore key moments in Sterns’ history. Miss World, Anneline Kriel becoming the face of Sterns in 1976; the Sterns Star, weighing 223.6 carats, being discovered in 1979; Tata Madiba choosing a Sterns ring for Graca Machel in 1998. These are just a few of the amazing stories they have to tell and we’ve made sure that each one gets the attention it deserves.

Of course the 120 year journey does not only belong to Sterns and so we encouraged users to share their own Sterns related stories to the website. We repurposed Google maps and allowed users to pin their own stories to it, indicating when and where it happened. In the past month we’ve seen dozens of users from all around the country share their special moments, which serves testament to how Sterns has touched peoples’ lives over the last 12 decades.
The campaign will be running until the end of the year, so we expect many more users to take part in the sharing. The client is happy, which makes us happy, and so we will be watching the rest of the campaign with interest.