Funereal Commerce

“Death eventually comes for us all, why not buy your casket direct and save a bunch of dough?” Today we dive into the digital transformation that has taken place in death care, and how funeral home websites have become marketplaces unto themselves. PLUS: a Veleb gets canceled for “digital blackface.” Listen now! 

Caskets, but in Millennial Pink

• A large portion of the funeral homes in the United States are owned by private equity rollups that consolidated infrastructure and operations through the 90’s and early 00’s.
• Phillip: “Why would you want to go direct [for a casket]? If you have ever been a family member making end-of-life choices for someone that's close to you, there is a very soft and gentle, but really gross, method of upselling in the funeral industry”
• Business Wire from 2021 says Titan Casket grows 400% in 2021, and it's poised to move beyond caskets to become a digital solution for funerals in 2022. It has seen its B2B business grow 15 X this year as well in launching a wholesale program. They also are in Sam's Club and Costco.com as of October.
• Capitol Records announced just last week that they were bringing on a robot rapper called FN Meka. And that robot was apparently powered by artificial intelligence for some marketing purposes. So it was backed by a major label, backed by Capital Music Group, backed by Blue Note.
• The virtual appearance of the rapper people were calling digital blackface and saying that there were tropes and appropriative tropes and maybe racist tropes therein of both the likeness, appearance, and the rap style, and all designed specifically to appropriate culturally that of real people.
• Phillip: “Virtual celebrities have an innate advantage in that they are the product of a marketing machine. And a marketing machine would make careful and considered decisions before putting the actions of a virtual celebrity out into the world that would bring repercussions back to the brand.”
• Brian: “This feels like corporations want to take all of the artistry out of something and just turn it into something that they can control 100%. They realize that… people are messy. So why don't we do this with non-people? It turns out that you have to have people behind something somewhere.”

Associated Links:

• The New York Times piece recounting the cancellation of FN Meka
• Titan Caskets Online
• Phillip’s Twitter Thread about DTC Caskets

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