Gary Dahl (entrepreneur)
| Gary Dahl | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Gary Ross Dahl December 18, 1936 Bottineau, North Dakota, U.S. |
| Died | March 23, 2015 (aged 78) Jacksonville, Oregon, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Washington State University |
| Occupation | Copywriter |
| Known for | Pet Rock |
| Net worth | $2 million |
| Spouse(s) | Marguerite Dahl |
| Children | Daughters: Chris Nunez and Samantha Leighton; son Eric Dahl; stepdaughter Vicki Pershing |
Gary Ross Dahl (December 18, 1936 – March 23, 2015) was an American copywriter, creative director, advertising agency owner, entrepreneur and the creator of the Pet Rock.
Dahl was born in Bottineau, North Dakota and raised in Spokane, Washington. His mother was a waitress and his father was a lumber-mill worker. He studied at Washington State University. He worked as a freelance copy editor.
While living in Los Gatos, California, he was sitting in a bar listening to friends complain about their pets. He joked that he had the perfect pet, a rock.
This led to the idea of selling rocks to people as pets, complete with instructions. The instruction book was the real product, which was full of gags and puns. The 1975 fad only lasted about half a year, but that was enough to make Dahl a millionaire.
From the proceeds of his fad "pets," Dahl opened a bar in Los Gatos, the ironically named Carrie Nation's (named after the famous bar smasher). He later attempted to follow up this success selling "Sand Breeding Kits" and "Red China Dirt," ostensibly a plan to smuggle mainland China into the US, one cubic centimeter at a time. These novelties failed to attract as much interest as the Pet Rock.
Dahl's agency, Gary Dahl Creative Services, in Campbell, California specialized in electronic advertising. He had written and produced hundreds of television commercials and thousands of radio commercials for a wide variety of businesses, including financial, automotive, wireless, education, retail, high-tech and dot-coms.
In 2000, Dahl won the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, the San José State University sponsored competition that awards authors for crafting particularly bad "purple prose." He defeated over 4,000 entries from all over the world. Dahl's winning entry:
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