The rest of his speech was unexceptional, about a Motivation Study he had conducted to find out what employees value most about their jobs. He assured us that job security, wages, and fringe benefits came far down on the list. First and foremost were Appreciation, Inclusion, Being Part of a Team. “People want to be touched, loved, hugged,” said Mr. Baker. “Lots of touchy-feely! You can buy toy dinosaurs, three for 99 cents—give one to a worthy employee! Put his name in the firm newsletter! Give them balloons—people are mad for it! Invite them to a staff meeting….”
Our next speaker, Tom Fisher, was a man of many parts: regular feature writer for Mortuary Management, owner-director of a North Dakota funeral home, and, as we learned from his opening remarks, a longtime, much admired radio and TV personality in his home state. “I’m known as Dakota Tom,” he told us.
Speaking in the sonorous tones of his calling, he evinced a poignant nostalgia for past glories: “My vocation in funeral services began at a time when the Golden Age of this profession was coming to an end,” he said. “Funeral practitioners who brought sophistication, expansion and acceptance of mortuary services, goods, and equipment to the national marketplace were no more. With their passing, the onset of a professional menopause took place. Isolationism, self-protective insulation from outside forces—these were the attitudes encouraged by industry leadership.”
As an Outside Force, I shifted uncomfortably in my chair at the thought of having caused a professional menopause. But Dakota Tom now launched into his major theme: the lessons he had learned from his radio and TV career. “Basically, this gave me a unique opportunity. The rewards were immeasurable in terms of experience because radio/television accorded me the chance to appreciate the full extent of the power of media image-making. Here is the point I make to you. We, as funeral directors and suppliers, have all kinds of problems on our respective plates these days, but I am here to tell you the greatest of these is based in our lack of identityand 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 professionalswe 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 Deathbecame 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 sellanything,” Mr. Glascock emphasized. “We go for informed buyingchoices.”
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 allbe 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 Managementunder 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.”