Miracles of Marketing

Today, marketing is not just taking action to promote a product or a service. It is much more than that and what is its impact? you may ask. Much bigger than what you think.

Marketing is pursuing customers and retaining them. To influence them, we need to understand human behaviour which plays an important role behind the scene. Engaging customers is a step towards success and using social proof, we can have larger audience participation and hence a bigger pool of potential customers.

Social Proof

It refers to the phenomenon of adapting to a change based on the review from the people around us.

Let’s look at a product that created a big buzz in the 1970s.

Gary Dahl, the creator of ‘The Pet Rock’ sold rocks, but not just any rocks. These were ‘genuine, pedigreed pet’ rocks. This product consisted of a nest for the pet, a box made of cardboard which was designed to carry the pet around and had air holes in it and the infamous guide book.

Fig. Pet Rock and some of the instructions from the guide book.

It even consisted of a guidebook with different sections about how to groom and take care of your ‘pet’. No matter how absurd the idea looked, it did solve the problem related to the maintenance of a regular pet and was perfect for the kids who demanded to have a pet at a young age.

This might be funny to you but Gary was not joking around. “PET ROCKS are found with the aid of a specially trained Rock Hound” as mentioned in the guide is a way of building trust over its quality. He even states ‘wild rocks’ as a harmful species, found commonly outside, and must be avoided at all costs.

“If your PET ROCK appears nervous and fidgety, it’s a better than even chance it’s suffering from dreaded Rock Bottom.”

This marketing genius became a millionaire by selling these at $3.95 per unit. The PET ROCK appears to be an outlandish scheme, but it worked, with the right marketing approach and an intention to solve a problem for customers, it was a win.