This billboard, reportedly spotted in a
subway station in New York City, may not be the most tactful way to drum up
business for a funeral home. But you have to admit, it’s clever.
Naturally, the funeral industry doesn’t
have too much trouble with supply – everyone dies eventually – but they have to
compete with each other just like any other business. Are the ads that manage
to stand out in poor taste, or just bringing a much-needed sense of humor to
the realities of death?
The Devanny-Condron Funeral Home in
Massachusetts raised a few eyebrows with this billboard congratulating a local
resident on her 100th birthday. Conflict of interest, anyone? In Florida, the
Beckman-Williamson Funeral Home & Crematory used a little dark humor to get
attention in the form of ‘Thank You for Smoking’ lighters.
These ads are funny, sure, but probably not
helping diffuse the public perception of the funeral industry as a bunch of
vultures lurking around waiting to pick at people’s bones. That’s especially
true considering the hundreds of suicides and murders that take place on subway
tracks, and the millions of smoking-related fatalities. But other ads seen as
insensitive – like the one below, touting funeral pre-arrangements as a
romantic Valentine’s Day gift – are simply trying to call attention to a basic
fact of life that most people ignore until the last possible minute.
Attitudes about death vary wildly between
cultures, religions and geographic areas, so it’s no surprise that what one
person finds incredibly tacky is greeted with a smile and a shrug by another.
The mere existence of cell phone-shaped caskets is enough to testify to that
fact.
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