Junto Innovation Hub
IT Get in touch →

Magazine Technology & Innovation

How De Beers and TVB Turn Documented Customer Trust Into Value

4 min read

How De Beers and TVB Turn Documented Customer Trust Into Value

A century-old diamond company is investing 70 million dollars in a fund for Botswana. A Hong Kong television network wins 28 awards in a single evening. A university gallery celebrates ten years by bringing together 120 experts from 23 cities. Taken together, the answer says something useful to anyone building a business today. Customer trust is not declared: it is documented. De Beers has published its 2025 sustainability report, downloadable from the group’s website. The report contains verifiable numbers and dated targets. TVB, Frasers House and Creative Secondary School, on different days, told their story with the same approach: concrete facts, before promises.

When Innovation Runs Through Transparency

The most interesting figure in the De Beers report is not carbon. The group has cut direct emissions by 14% since 2021. It is on track to reduce them by a third by 2030. The real story is traceability. More than five million rough diamonds have been scanned individually on the Tracr platform, to prove where every stone comes from. For a founder, this is the model to study: proof of a product’s journey becomes part of the product itself.

The company does not work alone. The Diamonds for Development fund, worth 70 million dollars in Botswana, supports the country’s economic diversification. The EntreprenHER programme, run with UN Women and local governments, trained another 500 women this year, bringing the total to more than 3,900 since 2016. And every mining job sustains 2.6 jobs off-site, with the ambition of reaching four by 2030. The consequence for the value chain is clear: perceived value is created outside the factory, not inside it.

There is also a lesson in humility in these numbers. De Beers manages 375,000 acres of land for conservation in southern Africa and has managed reserves for over 130 years. It celebrated the 70th rhino calf born in its Botswana reserves since 2012. CEO Al Cook put it in simple words: “the pace of change is growing, and so must our commitment”.

Storytelling as Business Infrastructure

If traceability builds trust, storytelling distributes it. At the Spark Awards 2026 in Hong Kong, TVB won the “Media of the Year” award. It collected 27 other recognitions, 13 of them gold, with clients from very different sectors. The McDonald’s Hong Kong campaign, “Back to the beginning in 1975”, won gold in eleven categories. Hang Seng Bank rewarded a video series against fraud. According to TVB’s management, the group is not just a television channel. It is an integrated partner combining content, familiar faces, television and digital platforms.

The parallel with De Beers is direct and worth noting. Sandrine Conseiller, CEO of De Beers Brands, observed that consumers expect broader impact from brands as standard practice, not as an exception. Those who document their impact sell with greater trust. Those who tell that documentation well turn it into market value. A century-old gallery celebrates the anniversary of an award-winning Cantonese restaurant. It is doing the same work as a startup publishing its roadmap in public.

There is, however, a risk, and it must be said. Awards, reports and celebrations are also self-referential marketing tools. The TVB award press releases and the sustainability reports themselves are produced by the companies featured in them. An investor or an operator would do well to read the numbers closely. Injuries are down 19% compared with 2024 and De Beers recorded no workplace fatalities. These are starting points for verification, not established truths. Declared transparency is different from audited transparency, and the difference lies entirely in external control.

Heritage and Community: Where Trust Takes Root

The third piece of the mosaic is the territorial dimension. Frasers House is a Luxury Collection hotel in Singapore. It has 406 rooms split between a modern tower and a heritage wing. The wing echoes the traditions of local shophouse residences. It offers more than 1,000 square metres of event space, including a column-free ballroom, and restaurants such as LUCE and The Lobby Lounge. The hotel does not just sell 38-square-metre rooms: it sells a connection to the Bugis district, near Arab Street and Kampong Glam. Cultural context becomes a competitive advantage.

The same logic operates in education. Creative Secondary School in Hong Kong celebrates twenty years with an open day themed “World of Possibilities”. It offers visitors trial lessons and meetings with teachers and families. The information comes from the programme published by the school. An institution that opens its doors physically is doing what De Beers does with scanned diamonds: it shows the process, not just the result.

And technology enters here too. The 10AFEST festival is organised by the Indra and Harry Banga Gallery of the City University of Hong Kong for its tenth anniversary. It brought together around 120 participants from 23 cities and 13 countries. The themes were art, artificial intelligence and extended reality applied to cultural heritage. Among the topics, university museums as learning spaces and the digital preservation of collections. Founder Indra Banga spoke of a platform that unites art, culture, technology and research.

The conclusion emerging from these five cases is operational, not rhetorical. Anyone building a business in 2026 has three proven levers. They can measure impact with dated targets and tell the story across multiple channels with credible partners. They can also anchor it to a real territory. The institutions that announced results in these weeks did not invent anything new. They include De Beers, TVB and the Hong Kong university gallery. They simply understood that in the marketplace of trust, documented proof is worth more than a shiny promise.

Sources:

Related articles