The American Way of Death Revisited

plates these days, but I am here to tell you the greatest of these is based in our lack of identity and image. The public we serve—those consumers we market—aren’t buying into our programming. When we witness a high-profile funeral on television, it warms our hearts. Those occasions are not frequent enough in their occurrence to build consumer image.”

The solution, he believes, is for funeral directors and suppliers to “scrap the present inefficient marketing methods,” pool their resources, and produce fifteen- to thirty-second commercials which “could be delivered by a respected, recognized spokesperson such as a Lloyd Bridges type.” The commercials would “affirm the personality of the industry. They should speak of memorialization, the reason for American funeral service. We could finally become the professionals we want to be and should be.” Ideal network programs for these commercials would be “Today,” “Good Morning America,” and “Regis and Kathie Lee”: “We should target the 18-to-25-year-olds. Remember, they are the ones who will be making arrangements for their parents. This is a passionate cause for me….”

His peroration: “Funeral service may be listing a bit under the strain of too much undue criticism. But I don’t think we have anyone to blame for that but ourselves. We don’t have to apologize to consumers, to critics or to anyone else….

“When The American Way of Death became a best-seller, funeral service went on a diet from which it never recovered. She was trying to tell us we should do something positive about ourselves. We have nothing to apologize for.”

Next up, the wondrously named Enoch Glascock offered what he described as “an odyssey.” Graduating from mortuary school at the age of twenty-three, his first job was in Greenwood Park, San Diego. “It’s the Forest Lawn of San Diego,” he told us, with three crematoria on the premises. But its selling methods were hopelessly wrong. People would ask for cremation—and there was stiff competition among the staff as to how quickly they could get rid of a cremation family. Some employees bragged that they could do it in twelve minutes! “That wasn’t right,” said Mr. Glascock. “I started talking with the cremation families, explaining their many options. When they realized the possibilities, some wanted the deceased present for the service. Some found it of value to purchase a cremation casket.

“As we went forward, management asked me to meet with all the cremation families. We only had two urns, tucked away on a shelf. I built an urn display and got a rental casket. We had a beautiful statue of Christ near the display, and niches by a babbling brook—those sold like hotcakes! We taught the rest of the staff these techniques. Families are served when there are options. But it’s tragically wrong to sell anything,” Mr. Glascock emphasized. “We go for informed buying choices.”

Mr. Glascock’s next job was with Pierce Brothers in Los Angeles. By then he had become an expert in the cremation business, and his new employer sought his advice on developing a cremation market. “Pierce did very few cremations, although they had the first crematory in Los Angeles. They just weren’t doing it right.” His first step was to conduct a community survey in which respondents were asked three questions: (1) Do you know the name Pierce? Many answered “Yes,” as Pierce had high name recognition in the area. (2) What do you know about cremation—can you have a traditional funeral with cremation? Most people answered “No” to that. (3) What does one do with the ashes? Almost everyone thought that ashes should be scattered.

The last two answers showed where the trouble lay—and pointed to the solution. “I’d spend at least an hour with the cremation family, and I’d come out with an urn, a memorial plaque, flowers.”

Over the years, Mr. Glascock continued to perfect his methods. “We came up with ‘$495 Forever Cremation,’ although this $495 didn’t last forever,” he told us. (Too true. Checking later with Pierce Brothers, I learned that the rock-bottom price in 1995 was $728.) He listed Pierce Brothers under “Cremation” in the Yellow Pages and in the obit pages of the newspapers. He put the emphasis on urns; at that time, the urns were too small, so he arranged for bigger ones.

Further outlining his strategy, he explained, “I welcome the family as I would guests to my own home. I offer the rest room, soda, hospitality. Today, I’d come out with embalming, dressing, visitation. At the end of the arrangements conference, we hold hands, say a prayer, have coffee. I’m a tour guide! We are starting to see more memorialization with cremation. We must all be tour guides.”

He gives the family the vital statistics form and tells them he will obtain the death certificate. “I say that we are required to show them a price list. So I give them the price list and tell them I’m leaving them to read it; go out of the room for about five minutes, or as long as needed to smoke a cigarette. I ask if they have any questions. We don’t accept cash—we take checks or credit cards. We don’t do accounts receivable.” And when it’s all over, “we send a card and a little tree.”

He left us with a final anecdote: “A family came from Pacific Palisades. Later, we heard from the daughter, who told me, ‘You took care of our mother. We had discussed your firm among others. I want to share a thought: we almost didn’t use you, your prices were so low. But then we talked with you and your staff multiple times and concluded you are ‘Our Sort of People.’ ”

As introduced in the program notes, Ron Hast “created the Casket Airtray, and presented it to funeral service in May of 1960—a design that continues unchanged.” (There is a color photo of “The Air Casketray Combination” and the “Original Casket Airtray” on the back of Mortuary Management under the headline FRATERNAL TWINS. They are cardboard shipping boxes, each in a wooden tray fitted for the purpose.) Publisher of Mortuary Management, Funeral Monitor, and Mortuary Science Monitor, he is also part owner of Abbot & Hast funeral homes. His topic for the seminar: “Easy, Low-Cost Methods of Public Relations.”

For starters, how to achieve name recognition? One funeral home gives turkeys at Thanksgiving and Christmas to deserving families—that is, to doctors, hospital executives, and others in a position to steer cases their way. (I remember in the dim past being told by a physician friend of receiving such gifts; his only complaint was that the turkey was delivered in a hearse, which he felt caused his patients some uneasiness.)

Ron Hast suggested that there are “more subtle ways of building real strength in your community. The important factor is to give something which allows everyone to participate.

“For example, apples cost 39 cents a pound with a discount by the case. You could buy ten cases at Lucky’s and make up packages of these with enough apples for everybody to get one. You could give a package to the employees of the local police station with a card saying, ‘We appreciate your fine service, with thanks from XYZ Chapel.’ Then—the officer on the next death call will remember XYZ! It’s cheap and easy. Take some to the ambulance service, the nurses’ lounge, the city health department—with a card, ‘Thanks for your good service.’ It’s cheap, it goes right to the heart of people in a position to remember your name. This concept works.”

Then there is that all-important matter of gaining patronage via the clergy. For this, Mr. Hast hit on the simple and highly effective scheme of having a photo taken of each local church. He showed samples of these, which cost 80 cents apiece. “We give hundreds of these to the minister, who can sell them to the parishioners for $10 apiece, thus raising $1,000 for the church fund,” he explained.

There was more to come. The Hast mortuary hired students for an hour or so after school to do odd jobs around the premises. Mr. Hast estimates that each student brings in an average of two cases a year.

Lastly—“System. Remember the word System.” Too many people, he explained, find it difficult to write letters; they keep putting it off, the moment passes, the letter never gets written. To overcome this obstacle, one can get five hundred cards and envelopes inscribed with the name of the sender for $100. He flourished some sample cards. “Send one to the lady at Kaiser who referred a death, and simply write on it, ‘The family appreciated your kindness to them.’ ”

The brothers Kevin and Mark Waterston titled their talk “Niche Marketing,” a double entendre for those attuned to mortuary-speak; a niche is a repository for cremation ashes but also a specific area of commerce, geddit? The Waterston Funeral Home in Minneapolis was started by their father, a “traditional” funeral director, Ron Hast told us in his introduction; but Kevin and Mark are very nontraditional. “They operate out of one building that will serve more than 2,000 a year, over five percent of all the deaths in Minnesota. They are true marketers,” he said. “They have a pre-need backlog of more than 20,000. And in the last several years they’ve served more than 1,000 new families each year.”

Like Tom Fisher, the brothers see “identity as the major problem in funeral service.” They learned much from the books Marketing Warfare and Bottom-up Marketing by Jack Trout and Al Ries, which led them to establish a cremation