Thinking Outside the Box – Podcasting Obituaries?

Yesterdays article “Finally a Obituary Worth Reading” sparked a lot of conversation and feedback.

One of the emails I received was from a member who has started to podcast their obituaries. I think this is pretty cool. The only thing is that the podcast is of a normal “cookie cutter” obituary. Think how awesome it would be if it was an amazingly written obituary like the one we featured yesterday?

Here is the info:

[blockquote class=red]Garefino Funeral Home Podcasts Obituaries

A Lambertville, N.J. funeral home has introduced what may be an industry first, an audio obituary, also known as podcasts. Charles Garefino, owner of the Garefino Funeral Home Inc. introduced the service earlier this year and thus far has been pleasantly surprised by the response.

For those not familiar with the term podcast, it is simply any form of an audio recording that can be listened to on a computer or downloaded to a personal listening device such as in iPod.

Garefino got the idea based on the popular response to his video tributes. ?It seemed like a natural, if we could do video, why not audio.? With that, the veteran funeral director approached a high school classmate of his who works as a broadcaster and who?s family had used his services. ?I asked him if he could simply record an obituary for me and give me the recording on a compact disc. What I got back was a dignified presentation that surpassed all my expectations.?

Garefino then began to give the completed discs to families on follow up calls, but soon got the idea that posting the audio file on his web site would be a natural fit. For visitors to his website www.garefino.com, users simply click on the audio on the obituary page and are able to listen to the presentation.

The New Jersey funeral director next is looking to market the service to other funeral directors. ?We can bring a full audio recording in, soup to nuts including music, and editing all for $10. I would encourage anyone who?s interested to listen to one on my website to see and hear what they can get.?

For further information on audio obituaries, interested parties can contact Charles Garefino at info@garefino.com.[/blockquote]

Here is a link to one of Charles’ podcast obituaries: http://www.garefino.com/_mgxroot/page_10780.php?task=Current&listing=All