A few months ago we posted an article about a funeral service who did a spoof of the MAC vs PC commercial as part of their marketing. Shortly after that we posted a guest article from Alan Creedy that was directed at inspiring funeral homes to think out of the box when creating marketing material. Now of course I know that there is a fine line when it comes to funeral home marketing and that you can’t make death to humorous or you might turn some people off. I also know that some smaller funeral homes just can’t compete (in marketing) with larger funeral homes who have a much larger budget. That is all changing.
With social media the playing field is level. You don’t have to have a huge budget to make a large presence with social media. Below is a video that was put online March 5th. This video has gone viral and in just a few days has racked up over 1.5 million views (at the I was writing this). I am positive that this small brand has quickly grabbed the attention of large competitors, and all it took was a creative and humorous video which, I am guessing took less than $1,000 to produce, and social media users did the rest.
*Warning: 2 explicit words (PG-13)
ryan, except for the expletive, this is exactly what i am talking about. the fine line you mention is in the funeral director’s mind not the consumers.
(Please insert your own degree of sarcasm) Funeral directors are not supposed to have a sense of humor. Nor are they supposed to earn a profit for their services or be seen as anything but rigid, emotionless and always dressed in black…even when away from the funeral home or attending a summer picnic for a service club.
Here is a news story on a Canadian Funeral Director who isn’t afraid to step outside the box….http://www.chathamdailynews.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3452231
– We are now living in a new era where funeral directors need to be presenting a different image but sadly, as Alan has pointed out, the industry needs to break out of its shell of preconceptions that they have placed on themselves…….Cheers – Colin Firth……..mysendoff.com
nice to see Mr. MacNeil showing a different side of his life. I bet that the people in his community think he’s a real stand-up kind of guy.
I like how the story about the funeral director in Chatham has an ad for a funeral home at the bottom of the page. But it is not the same funeral home as the subject comedian’s funeral home.
fluidpusher. Pretty sure the ads below the story run through a rotation. I reloaded the page a couple of times and saw ads for carpet cleaning, a bus charter and a credit union.
Colin Firth
That is correct. Our ads rotate on refresh and are completely random.
-Josh
Ryan,
It would be great to try some tongue in cheek advertising for the funeral home. But it is a gutsy move. And I think you have vastly underestimated the cost of producing this video. This was done by a very professional crew. The lighting is perfect. The sound is perfect. Do you see any microphones?? That means there was a big hand held boom microphone with somebody operating it. There are a dozen different shots. A moving camera that never jerks that rolls along with the people on screen. The main guy is an actor and the script is great. They had to do many times over to get everything to look this good and then it took hours of time editing this down to the slick 1 minute and 34 second clip that we watched. This was not done by a couple guys and a handheld digital camera.