In 1975, copywriter Gary Dahl took an object with almost no conventional product value: a smooth rock, and constructed an elaborate joke around it.
The Pet Rock came nestled in straw inside a cardboard pet carrier with air holes. Dahl wrote an instruction manual modeled after dog-training books.
The offer has two parts: the packaging and the actual object.
The object was available free on the ground.
More than a million Pet Rocks were sold for about $4 apiece (roughly $22 today). Dahl himself described what he had really packaged: a sense of humor.
Take away Dahl’s framing and you have a rock.
Put the framing back and you have the Pet Rock.
The meaning wrapped around the object produced most of what people were buying.
RW
.
.
.