It is ironic that an industry so used to death, does not foresee its own demise.
A life-long friend to the church, those involved in funerals could count on religion and ritual, conformity and convention as the backbone of their business.
But secularisation, individualism, cynicism and the desire to celebrate life rather than commiserate death have changed things forever. Accelerated by the pandemic, customers and society rapidly acclimatised to more commoditised body disposal. Leaving the issue of the role of the rest of a traditional funeral a little up in the air.
At Humbug the writing on the chapel wall seemed written large, 10 feet tall, and being the practical, no-nonsense folk we are, we decided to do something about it and get into the driving seat of change. Especially as the future customers of that industry, the baby boomer generation, are our bread and butter.
So, we spent the past few months of our own time, energy and money preparing a response to the industry’s challenge, exploring the change necessary for thousands of traditional, generational businesses to thrive into the future. Excitedly discussing the possibilities of new and evolved business models, products, services and communications, industry language and timelines for planning departures.
For 5 weeks we happily shared our thinking with the top 20 players, despatched an old school direct mail campaign, featuring an Obituary piece, a ‘Black Paper’ on the industry’s demise, and a cheery Party invite inviting operators to make some changes. All backed up with some new-fangled emails and barrages of social posts.
1 conversation resulted – 5%.
Undeterred we kept going.
Maybe some future customer feedback might spark some interest we thought. So we invested in talking to seventy 55-year-olds, using the innovative DeepLoop digital video platform, offering the insights free to view to anyone interested enough to talk to us.
A grave-like silence ensued.
Well, one response agreed with our tongue-in-cheek suggestion that we might now be irritating!
How rude.
Still 10% mind.
And then, to save the day, a LinkedIn invite to have a call popped up.
A close call for our Premium subscription.
15%.
So, in summary, two businesses and one association have responded to our efforts and two positive conversations are budding. That’s a 10% positive response rate in old money but we feel a little depressed by the apparent lethargy, given the overwhelming severity of the situation facing the traditional funeral director.
Sadly, there seems to be a systemic absence of planning for positive change in the face of fundamentally shifting consumer attitudes and behaviours toward death, funerals and celebration of life.
An ancient industry has apparently fallen out of step with the pace and direction of consumer change.
We remain adamant we are right, but our foray into this world has left us at a loss as to why the industry, especially its marketers have turned a blind eye to the graft and provocations we tried to provide from the outside.
The 2 organisations who have connected with us clearly have a better vision of the need to change to innovate a more compelling future for ‘funerals’. It could be an interesting journey working collaboratively with them, using our proprietary tools and techniques, to re-imagine their businesses to better appeal to the baby boomer generation we’re specialists and advocates for.
In the meantime, it’s on to pastures new, seeking out where baby boomers are poorly represented and stereotypically treated. Any suggestions, anyone?
Another contact just come through LinkedIn but I've yet to determine whether they are seeking to sell me a funeral plan or had an epiphany on the marketing front. Either might be handy.
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