ORIGINS: A LESSON IN MARKETING – HOW THE PET ROCK BECAME AN INSTANT, IF SHORT-LIVED, HIT

DAVID ADAMS looks back to where it all began for the ‘pet rock’…

A rather unusual anniversary passed last month – the 25th anniversary of the creation of the pet rock.

It was a struggling American ad copywriter, Gary Dahl, who first came up with the idea of the pet-which-required-no care, apparently after listening to his friends complain about looking after their pets while in a bar in his home town of Los Gatos in California.

Backed by a couple of investors, he began production on what he told one newspaper started as “just a good giggle”.

The ‘pets’ – which were sourced from a Mexican beach at the cost of about a cent each – came in a specially designed cardboard box, complete with breathing holes and straw, and were sold with a detailed manual, a tongue-in-cheek guide to caring for and training your new ‘pet’.

The rocks, which sold for $US3.95, hit the marketplace in time for Christmas, 1975, and quickly became the ‘must have’ gift.

While they didn’t hang around long (although his original pet rocks spawned a host of imitations and auxiliary businesses), such had been the uptake of the fad that within just a couple of months of their release, 1.5 million sales had been recorded, making Dahl a millionaire. Newsweek described it as “one of the most ridiculously successful marketing schemes ever”.

In a 1988 interview, Dahl – then still in advertising – said that he didn’t know if coming up with the idea had been an “asset or a liability” given the interest it had attracted from “wackos”.

“Sometimes I look back and wonder if my life wouldn’t have been simpler if I hadn’t done it,” he told the paper.

Dahl, who said in a 1984 TV interview that he was the only one who believed his idea would work, died in March this year at the age of 78, just before the anniversary of his creation.

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