Importance of Advertising

“Advertising can be more important than what you’re selling”

Now, I’m not saying that you should sacrifice the quality of your products, you shouldn’t. What I am saying, is that even though you may have a product or service that people really don’t need or want, with some creative advertising you could do very well.

Let me remind you of a man you probably have heard of before. His name is Gary Dahl. What’s so special about Mr. Dahl? Simple, he made millions of dollars advertising a product that was free to the world.

Gary Dahl was an advertising man who considered dogs, cats, birds and fish a pain in the neck. They were too messy, too misbehaved and they cost too much money he said. However, he had an idea…

In 1975 Gary Dahl introduced the Pet Rock at a San Francisco gift show. Creatively packaged with a Pet Rock Training Manual that included instructions for making your Pet Rock roll over, play dead and how to house train it. Neiman-Marcus immediately ordered 500.

Gary then put together a press release that showed a picture of him surrounded by boxes of his Pet Rocks. Newsweek did a half-page ad on Gary and his Pet Rock. In less than two months Gary Dahl was shipping 10,000 Pet Rocks a day!

By Christmas, 3/4 of all the daily newspapers in America had run stories on the Pet Rock. As soon as Christmas passed, Mr. Dahl relabeled the Pet Rocks as Valentine’s Day gifts for loved ones in need of a low-maintenance pet.

The Pet Rock sold over a million units for $3.95 in 1975 and made Mr. Dahl a very wealthy man. If it wasn’t for Gary’s genius marketing and advertising skills, the thousands of pet rocks sold would still be sitting in Baja Mexico.

Mr Dahl’s is an amazing story of how creative advertising can really take a product to new markets and instantly create a world-wide fad. Talk about get rich quick schemes, there are not many that can compete with that!