No product. No feature. Just belief. They sold a rock.
A California adman named Gary Dahl was in a bar listening to friends complain about their pets — feeding, walking, mess. As a joke he said his pet was perfect: a rock.
He packaged an ordinary stone in a cardboard box with air holes, like a real pet carrier. He wrote a straight-faced 32-page training manual — how to make your Pet Rock "sit" and "stay" (easy) and "roll over" (a gentle push). He sold it for $3.95.
He sold over a million of them in six months. The rock cost him a penny. He became a millionaire in a matter of months.
Nobody was buying a rock. You can get a rock outside for free. They were buying the joke, the box, the manual — the story.
People almost never buy the thing. They buy what the thing means — the feeling, the story, the identity wrapped around it. Water in a designer bottle. A logo on a plain shirt. The same product, transformed by the story told about it.