Marketing to Death

Life may be random for Steve Jobs, but it is also very easy. All he has to do is stand up there on stage, in that black turtleneck and those blue jeans, strap on his latest iGizmo and the crowd goes wild. And why not? Everything Steve Jobs touches turns to cool. Well, almost everything.

Would that it were so simple for the rest of us mere marketing mortals. Not even once in our lifetimes might we have a chance to wrap our brilliance around anything half as scintillating as an iPod... or even the lowly mini Mac.

But, you know, it really doesn't matter because that's too damn easy anyway. The real challenge in this business is to take something inherently unmarketable and make it speak to its consumers.

Nowhere is that kind of energy more in evidence today than in the "death" category. Yes -- I'm talking funerals and caskets and cemeteries. You'd almost call it a rebirth, but for obvious reasons, we won't.

Seriously, though, it seems that barely a day goes by when some marketer somewhere isn't trying to make a splash with some sort of death-related innovation. Tombstone Hearse Company offers Harley-drawn casket carriers. Pet's Funeral of Santiago, Chile, is promoting caskets for cats and dogs. Renaissance Urns is marketing X-ray friendly vessels, complete with a designer silk case, and guaranteed to get through airport security.

One of the most ambitious initiatives in the death category is happening in the cemetery business. The Ramsey Creek Preserve in Westminster, South Carolina, specializes in eco-friendly departures in a "green burial location," dotted not by headstones but tree plantings and inscribed rocks. The thought is that baby boomers will be attracted to a greener, hipper burial. Billy Campbell, who runs the place, reportedly hopes to turn Ramsey Creek into a national brand for burials.

Then there's Tyler Cassity, who runs the famed Hollywood Forever Cemetery, who wants to add a high-tech twist to his enterprise. His idea, as reported by Marco R. della Cava in USA Today, is to "install a local area network that would allow visitors to walk the preserve with a handheld device that brings up still and video images of the deceased."

Wonder if Tyler got the idea from Larry Johnston, CEO of Albertsons, who is introducing handheld devices in hopes of improving the supermarket shopping experience. Or maybe Larry got the idea from Tyler. An idea -- good or not-so-good -- can come from anywhere in marketing.

The true guru of death marketing, however, has to be Sam Mulgrew of Podunk, Iowa. For years, Sam had struggled to crack the coffin market. He didn't hit paydirt, though, until he enlisted the help of the Trappist Monks who lived nearby and re-branded his wares as "Trappist Caskets."

The caskets are simple as can be, but they are a hit. According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, when Mary Valsa of Chicago ordered an oak model for her 97-year-old mother, it actually created a buzz at the wake: "They were all saying... I'm sorry for your loss, but where did you get that casket?"

Perhaps the ultimate irony, here, is that when you hear the words "death" and "marketing" together, usually the topic is the not the marketing of death, but the death of marketing. For this twist of fate, we should be grateful. I think.

The marketing of death is, of course, simply the most ghastly example of the potential to turn ostensibly unattractive products or services into something that approaches hip and cool.

In the case of the Seattle Central Library, the challenge was simply to avoid being dull. It took a whole lot of money -- $165 million to be exact -- and the design talents of Rem Koolhaas. But the result, according to a review by David Littlejohn in The Wall Street Journal, is the intellectual equivalent of an amusement park ride.

From the outside, Seattle Central doesn't look anything like the square, brick and mossy edifice I trudged to as a kid. It looks like a great big, Titanic iceberg -- all lopsided and sparkling in steel and glass.

Inside, "a team of roving reference librarians... talk to their colleagues via wireless transmitters around their necks. " At any other library the area would be called the reference room, but at Seattle Central, it's known as the "Mixing Chamber." Seattle Central attracts 8,000 visitors a day.

We won't even get into the story of Vivian Koa, who is keeping the mundane market for artificial Christmas trees fresh by integrating cool technologies that make her fake trees glow like so many yuletide lava lamps. Or the tale of Dr. Randy Bryson, who transformed his struggling drill-and-fill dental practice into a booming "smile-creation" enterprise. He's pulling down a half-million dollars a year.