Suckers! The fact: more than a million people bought rocks as pets. The lesson: you can sell anything to anybody.

He was like any of us, just somebody with a dream-and a rock. Itwas April 1975 when Gary Dahl, a California ad man, startedgrousing about the chores of taking care of a pet. Suddenly, Dahlwas spinning a yarn to his friends about his pet rock-which had agreat personality, and was easy and inexpensive to care for. And sosimple to train: With just a little help, pet rocks roll over andplay dead very well.

Dahl, then 37, recognized a potential gag gift and spent severalmonths writing the Pet Rock Training Manual. (Sampleinstructions on house-training: "Place it on some oldnewspapers. The rock...will require no further instruction.")He included a rock with each book and charged $3.95 for the set.(In 1999's dollars, that would be $11.25.)

To even his own amazement, Dahl sold 1.5 million.

P.T. Barnum is reported to have said, "There's a suckerborn every minute." You have to wonder what ol' Barnumwould have made of a late-20th-century America that's gone madfor everything from pet rocks to Pop Rocks, from Cabbage Patch Kidsto Beanie Babies. But if the consumer receives pleasure from aproduct, and if the product does what it's purported to, who isanybody to call anybody else a sucker?

In fact, cigarettes may be the only true sucker product: If you usethem correctly, they're virtually guaranteed to kill you in aslow, painful way. Pork rinds have to be a close second. (Thinkabout it. Pieces of fried fat in a bag?)

So if you want to create a sucker for your product, remember,it's all in the eye of the beholder-or the wallet of theconsumer. Regardless, the products featured in this story are farfrom obvious, slam-dunk sells. But these BIZ Experiencess made themtheir business anyway, and in a big way.

Geoff Williams has never forgotten a touching father-and-sonmoment in the late 1970s when his dad drew his young boy aside andsaid, "Son, this is my pet rock." "I'd like tosay I thought he was crazy," Williams admits, "but Isuddenly wanted one, too."

Toy Be or Not Toy Be

For years, Ken Hakuta, now 49, seemed destined to be remembered forselling fish meal to Japan. Fish meal, Hakuta explains, is fed tothe birds there. But he was more than a bird food salesman; hisimport-export company was also shipping Teflon-coated ironingboards from the United States to Japan.

Then in the early 1980s, the Wacky Wallwalker entered his life. Itwas a slimy rubber toy, says Hakuta. His mother had sent it fromJapan to his children, and when Hakuta saw it, he said, "Wow,this is really something. This is the purpose of my life. I'vebeen living for these wall walkers."

Okaaay! At any rate, Hakuta was captivated: Stick the rubber,octopus-shaped toy onto the wall and gravity would pull it to thefloor, but not before it had managed to "walk" its waydown the wall. Hakuta sank $100,000 into the Wacky Wallwalker,buying the North American rights to distribute the product from theJapanese company that manufactured the toy.

"People thought I was nuts," says Hakuta. "Theythought I'd lost it. Even my friends didn't think it was agood idea." Hakuta had graduated from Harvard Business Schoolin 1977; he was supposed to know better. "But no, I was goingto sell these sticky rubber toys," he says.

America was enchanted with Hakuta's product. They appeared instores, in fast-food chains and in cereal boxes. Hakuta sold 250million of them in the 1980s and made more than $20 million.

How did he do it? Some of it was luck. Hakuta lived in Washington,DC, at the time, and he persuaded a few toy shops to sell hisproduct. The Washington Post ran a story, and then the CBS EveningNews followed up with a two-minute piece to close its broadcast onenight. "It must have been a slow news day," admitsHakuta.

Suddenly, the phone started ringing off the hook, and Hakuta sayshe continued getting coverage, in part because he was soenthusiastic about his toy. "How you sell a weird product isby throwing so much passion behind it, you make believers ofeverybody. You basically electrify everybody," says Hakuta."It's like having an ugly baby, but damn it, you love it,you know? [And soon] everybody believes it's the most beautifulbaby in the world."

There are two problems with this idea, of course. First, manyentrepreneurs have what they think is a "beautiful baby,"but they have no idea how to present the little dickens to theworld, says Hakuta, who went on to write the 1988 book How toCreate Your Own Fad and Make a Million Dollars (William Morrow); healso had his own PBS TV show for six years called Dr. Fad.(Currently, he's following another trend-make that two ofthem-as founder and CEO of Internet herb seller AllHerb.com.)

Hakuta says one marketing ploy is to manufacture a myth around theproduct. As an example, Hakuta suggests the BIZ Experiences whocreated the Cabbage Patch craze: "There are so many ugly dollsthat haven't sold. Why that one? Obviously Xavier Roberts was agenius at marketing them." Instead of just selling CabbagePatch kids, Roberts put the dolls up for adoption. He wasn'tlooking for customers but rather "parents," who wouldlove and care for the little tykes. And each "baby" wasan individual.

Problem number two: You can't pretend to love your "uglybaby." Well, you can pretend, but it'll blow up in yourface, warns Joe Girard, author of How to Sell Anything to Anybody(Warner Publishing Co.), among others. Girard is in the GuinnessBook of World Records for being the world's greatest retailsalesman. But before he was successfully selling cars and hittingthe lecture circuit, he was custom building and selling houses."I'm ashamed to say it, but I was always saying thingsthat weren't honest, nice and true to con people, to misleadthem," Girard admits. "It all came back to haunt me. Ilost a $3 million dollar building business at age 35. I lost itall. Try that on your attitude machine-to be thrown out of yourhouse with your wife and two kids."

Know Your Audience

John Wilkinson isn't in the Guinness Book of World Records, buthe is a good salesman. He rents and sells sumo wrestling suits. Ifyou weren't born in bulk and you want to sumo wrestle,Wilkinson's company provides the chance.

Laugh if you want, but the 42-year-old's San Francisco company,Total Rebound, made $3.5 million in 1998 and expects to make $4million this year. Well, OK, to collect that cash, Total Rebounddoes more than just the sumo wrestling thing. Wilkinson'scompany also sells supplies for human shuffleboard games, aninflatable mountain climb, and "Off With Their Heads," agame in which people get to behead each other and live to tellabout it.

Not your average, everyday forms of entertainment. Making it atougher sell, these games are prohibitively expensive for the localyokel to purchase-but not too expensive for a company to purchaseor rent out for a day or a weekend, for a company picnic, seminaror party. Suddenly Wilkinson's surreal ideas make sense. Afterall, in this computer age, says Wilkerson, "There's somuch less social interaction. People crave it. And we are asolution to that. So it isn't that hard of a sell, once youexplain, 'Here's your problem,' and 'Here's howwe can help.'"

But in 1992, when Total Rebound started renting out its wackyinteractive games, human resources departments were confused. Itwasn't yet a Dilbert world, the Internet didn't exist asfar as the general public was concerned, and the idea thatemployees might need more stimulation than a company picnic withwieners and Kool-Aid was only beginning to be explored. ButWilkinson already knew that people loved the games; he hadunwittingly done his own market research during Total Rebound'searly days as a bungee jumping company, the first one in thecountry to receive OSHA approval.

You'd think bungee jumping would be a hard sell and that thosecustomers could definitely be called suckers: Here, you take thisrope and you plunge from a great height and hurtle toward what willseem to be certain death. But Wilkinson reports there was always asteady stream of customers-so many, in fact, he began offeringdiversions, like sumo wrestling, for those waiting in line.

So during the off-season ("Somebody decided bungee jumping hada season," says a perplexed Wilkinson), he aimed for thecorporate market. He teamed up with caterers and event planners,finding them through their associations. Now Total Rebound'sclients include Microsoft and Cisco Systems.

But there is a downside to owning a business that features zanygames like human-bowling (a person climbs into a life-size bowlingball, and, well, you get the idea): Because few people know thesegames exist, Wilkinson has to do a lot of advertising-at least$100,000 worth each year. The upside of selling something bizarre?Observes Wilkinson: "Truly, with what we do, we don't havemuch competition."

Gift of Gab

There once was a man with a knack.

He collected words by the sack.

Now he's king of the hill,

Last year, he made six mil'.

And he's making so much Jack

because he stuck magnets on his back.

Dave Kapell sells poetry kits-magnets with words-the idea beingthat Longfellows and short fellows can make up their own verse onthe front of the fridge. It's a creative, fun product, but aseven Kapell admits, the question consumers have to hurdle is,"Why would I pay $20 for a little box of words?"

Kapell was a guitarist in a Minneapolis band when he created theprototype for Magnetic Poetry. The musician clipped out compellingphrases from newspapers, magazines and letters, stuck them in anenvelope, and then when he had songwriter's block, he'ddump them out and see if anything ignited his imagination. One dayin 1993, the then-311-year-old fatefully sneezed, scattering thewords about. But instead of thinking, "Gee, maybe I should getsome antihistamine," Kapell promptly concluded, "Thiswould work a lot better if the words would stick in oneplace."

When Kapell's friends saw the word magnets on his refrigerator,they loved the concept and soon, Kapell was bringing his littlecreation to social get-togethers. "They were invariably thehit of the party, and that was the point when I realized I wasreally on to something," says Kapell, who figures his start-upcapital to begin Magnetic Poetry was "probably about a hundredbucks." This year, he expects his company, with a staff of 24,to make $6.5 million.

So how did Kapell convince people-lots of people-to plop down $20for a bag of words? Surely, any poet-wanna-bes could opt for penand paper, and there's always the computer that probably setthem back a couple grand. For starters, as all BIZ Experiencessshould, Kapell passionately believed in his idea. Second, he waslucky that his product has built-in word-of-mouth. "The beautyof our product is we have some prime billboard real estate, whichis people's refrigerators," says Kapell. "You go intopeople's homes and play with it for a while, and all of thesudden, you're hooked. Then you don't care how much you payfor it."

Third, Kapell looked for help from businesses close to home:"I went to the stores where I shopped, and I'd ask the[retailers], 'What would you do if you were me?'"Kapell received recommendations on how to package his product, andeven what sales representatives he should contact.

Which echoes Girard's guidance: Don't be afraid to ask thepeople you're selling to for advice on how to sell. During hisautomobile era, if Girard didn't sell a car, he'd call theex-customer back and ask, "Was it something I said? Was theresomething you didn't like about me? People will tell you, ifyou ask them," insists Girard.

Rock On

If there's a commonality between sumo wrestling suits, magnets,Wacky Wallwalkers, Beanie Babies and the like, it's theemotional link between the product and the customer. Gian LuigiLonginotti-Buitoni, president and CEO of Ferrar's North AmericaInc., writes of this link in his new book, Selling Dreams (Simon& Schuster). "You have to try to interpret the spirit ofthe nation," says Longinotti-Buitoni. "For instance, whenthe Walkman [took off], it fit in with the dreams of that time,giving everybody the freedom to listen to music and walkaround." BIZ Experiencess who want to sell something unusual,says Longinotti-Buitoni, have to think just like an artist."You don't come up with good ideas through marketanalysis," he says. "It requires a certain curiosity, acreative way of thinking."

After all, the pet rock didn't sell because of a public need.Everybody just wanted in on Dahl's joke. And if your customersdon't have that emotional connection, you're going to bethe one who feels like a sucker, especially if you're stuckwith a warehouse full of 50,000 toilet plungers that double astoothbrushes. Even the pet rock guru himself admits, "For afew years, I was guilty of believing my own publicity and thinkingI was invincible." Indeed, Dahl now has a successfuladvertising agency, but he's never repeated the success of thepet rock, which he describes as "just a happyaccident."

Yet almost 25 years later, the phone still rings off the hook withinventors calling Dahl, seeking his expertise, his connections andfinancial help. "I'm usually polite enough to say'No,'" sighs Dahl. And reporters still routinely phonehim, too. "I really get tired of these calls," says aweary-sounding Dahl. Ah, if only we all had such problems.

Selling the Dream

The term "dream" is not easy to use, particularly whendiscussing business. Some could say it's clearly a cliché,both difficult to define and too vague to clearly express abusiness concept. Often people resent being associated with such anethereal term, feeling that it belittles the seriousness of theirbusiness activities. Yet a dream is a catchy image that bestdescribes what ignites our imagination and desires.

A company's creativity can transform common products intodreams. For example, today Levi's jeans are about as far fromthe coal miners' trousers as you can get, Nike sneakers are alifestyle statement more than exercise shoes, the movie"Titanic" is far more than a well-documented story on theship's tragic sinking, and Viagra represents much more thanjust an anti-impotence pill.

Connecting with the customer's imagination has become anobligatory path to business success. They are no longer contentjust satisfying their needs-they want to fulfill theirdreams.

When attempting to create a product that you hope will fulfill yourcustomers' dreams, keep the following points in mind:

• Interpret the spirit of time to understand which dreams willcapture the customer. Dreams are shaped by culture. It was the"flower-power" generation's love for the underdogthat created a cultlike emotional following for the VolkswagenBeetle. The baby boomers' desire for independence and freedomcinched success for the Sony Walkman and Nike sneakers.
  
  Artists, people of culture, scientists and thinkers foresee andoften provoke the changes that shape a culture. By integratingtheir intuition into an organization, a company can better tuneinto the times. Just as artists search endlessly and randomly forinspiration, a company should constantly explore unrelated fieldsand approach business eclectically in order to create dreams.It's hardly surprising that the companies with the mosteclectic approach to business are ground-breakers when it comes toinitiating trends and tastes.
  
  
• Create products and services designed and engineered toconvey intense emotions. Companies cannot survive merelysatisfying consumer needs. Today, most companies can providezero-defect products that perfectly perform their function. This isno longer a differentiating quality that, on its own, can sway thecustomer. Companies that rely strictly on marketing and discountsto promote otherwise common products will never win any emotionalhold on their customers' minds. To achieve the type ofcommercial success that establishes a brand for years to come, acompany has to infuse emotional qualities that connect withcustomers' strongest desires into its products andservices.
  
  
• Practice "dreamketing." No matter howfantastic a product is, it cannot stand alone to represent a dream.A Ferrari in the potholed hell of a city traffic jam is anythingbut a dream. A dream is not a product, it is an experience.
  
  Reaching the market is no longer enough: We have to touch (in anemotional sense) our customers' imagination. The first concernof the "dreamketer" should be to create an evocative andseductive brand, one that can spark desire and set thecustomer's mood. Since customers should never be awakened fromtheir dreams, the dreamketer should ensure that the company'scommunication, distribution, special events and any type ofcustomer relations consistently support the brand's mission tobuild that dream in customers' minds.
  
  
• Choose the customer. There is a fundamental differencebetween a customer and a consumer. The consumer is a statistic, ahypothetical figure symbolizing millions of indistinct people whomechanically buy goods for their functional and utilitarian worth.A customer, on the other hand, is an identifiable individual, witha specific personality and highly selective and distinct tastes,who is emotionally bound to the company's creations. Being aconsumer or a customer is a question of purchasing attitude. Thesame person could be both a customer and a consumer. After all, acompany is only as worthy as its customers are.
  
  
• Choose a creator. To surprise customers'imaginations, you must prophesy what they will want tomorrow. Theinspiration must come from within the company. A company mustdevelop, at all levels of the organization, a culture that activelypromotes original experimentation and aesthetic research. For thisto happen, it must hire creators who can lead the organizationtoward an original and recognizable company taste. Products andservices cannot be revolutionary: Customers have to be ready forthem. It's up to the creators to heed their aestheticsensitivity in determining which dreams can become commercialsuccesses.
  
  
• Support creators with a creative organization. Creatorsalone cannot create dreams. They can provide the vision and theinspiration, but dreams are not made by a single person. Dreams areemotional experiences that require many ancillary activitiesperformed by many gifted people. To create dreams, creators must besupported by a group of individuals with profound product knowledgewho can crystallize the vision and the ideas into products andservices that exalt the customers' desires. Creativity is themost important quality for achieving business success (or any typeof success, for that matter), and companies selling dreams are keyexamples to which any type of industry should turn to learn how toenhance this most precious and scarce resource.
  
  
• Seize any possible chance to magnify the customer'sperceived added value. Art, which appeals mostly to ouremotions, is the foremost example of the maximization of addedvalue: Consider the astronomical prices paid for some colors on acheap canvas painted by a famous artist. Since a company that sellsa dream is actually selling an experience rather that simply aproduct, it has several chances to influence its customers'perception of added value.
  
  Chateau Rothschild is a perfect example of this concept. It is oneof the best wines in the world, and its beautiful labels are nearlyas prized as the outstanding contents of its bottles. To achievelong-lasting financial well-being, companies must welcome impulseand steer clear of typical short-term pressures form shareholdersand analysts. A company must build a financial structure thatallows risk-taking. The role of the financial manager should not beto help a company avoid risks, but rather to enable it to take therisks. With no risks, there are no dreams, since dreams, bydefinition, are never born of the norm.
  
  Excerpt from: Selling Dreams How To Make Any ProductIrresistible by Gian Luigi Longinotti-Buitoni (Simon &Schuster)
  
  

Creating A Sucker Society

... or at least your own little piece of it. You have a product orservice that you love, and you want everybody else to love it.Well, you'd do well to read Robert B. Cialdini's book,Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion (Quill TradePaperbacks). Cialdini is a professor of psychology at Arizona StateUniversity in Tempe, and he's done a considerable amount ofresearch on how commerce crazes start. If you want to start yourown fad, his three top rules are:

• Expensive equals good. "There's a classic storyabout Chivas Regal, the Scotch, which when it began was really amoderately priced Scotch that didn't differentiate itself fromits competitors," says Cialdini. "They decided to raisethe price substantially above any of their competitors, withoutchanging the product a bit. Sales took off. If people don'tknow much about the product, then they just revert to thestereotype, expensive equals good. This must be worth themoney."
  
  
• The scarcity effect. If people like your business, lessmay be more. Cabbage Patch, Beanie Babies and Furbys are crazes inpoint, says Cialdini, as was the hype surrounding "The PhantomMenace" release last spring. "They made it a scarceresource because people want more of what they can get lessof," says Cialdini.
  
  
• There's safety in numbers. If you can give theimpression your product is popular, it will become more popular,Cialdini contends. He elaborates: "In one study, they had agroup of five people stare at an empty spot in the sky and see whatwould happen. Almost everybody who walked by cast a glance at thatempty spot, and many joined them to stare up at the empty spot.When they had one person stare at that spot, they didn't getnear as many followers. So there's safety in choosing what alot of people have chosen: You're probably going to beright."
  
  

Contact Sources

Girard Productions, (810) 774-9020

Magnetic Poetry, dkapell@magneticpoetry.com,http://www.magneticpoetry.com

Total Rebound, (800) 4-REBOUND, http://www.totalrebound.com