Scanning the conference program for the three-day International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association (ICCFA) “Wide World of Sales Conference” running from Jan. 14-16 at Bally’s & Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, billed by its promoters as the “only sales and marketing conference for end-of-life professionals,” one is quickly brought to the realization that the funeral business is first and foremost just that; a business. And secondly, its conference format and focus doesn’t look so very different than the dozens of such events I used to attend for lawyers, judges, law students and law professors back when I was chief writer for Ontario Lawyers Weekly (now The Lawyers Weekly) in Toronto.
The ICCFA is chalk full of trade ideas on how to better utilize “death business management software” and the conference features motivational speakers, such as Anthony Iannarino, CEO of B2B Sales Coach & Consultancy in Columbus, Ohio, and Gary O’Sullivan, of The Gary O’Sullivan Company in Winter Garden, Florida, who will be holding a 90-minute “fireside chat” from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday for arriving conference attendees. Apparently the members of the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association involved in sales very much like what O’Sullivan has to say because he was recognized as their speaker of the decade in 2000 – and then again, for an unprecedented second time, in 2010.
While there is nothing surprising about any of this, I can’t help recalling the late Jessica Mitford’s 1963 landmark investigative journalism in her best-selling book, The American Way of Death, an expose of abuses in the early 1960s funeral home industry in the United States, which was still being read by aspiring journalists 20 years later when I was in journalism school. Feeling that death had become much too sentimentalized, highly commercialized, and, above all, excessively expensive, Mitford documents the ways in which, she argued, funeral directors took advantage of the shock and grief of friends and relatives of loved ones to convince them to pay far more than necessary for the funeral and other services. Mitford died at the age of 78 in July 1996, but shortly before her death she had completed The American Way of Death Revisited, which was published posthumously in 1998. Mitford, in keeping with her wishes, was cremated in an inexpensive funeral by Pacific Interment Service in San Francisco at a total cost reportedly of $533.31.
The Sterling, Virginia-based International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association is the only international trade association representing all segments of the cemetery, funeral service, cremation and memorialization industry.
“Founded in 1887 as the Association of American Cemetery Superintendents,” according to the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association’s website, “the organization was created by a group of 18 cemeterians whose goal was to improve the appearance and operations of their properties. Throughout its first century of operation, the association grew in size and mission and underwent several name changes, but it remained a national cemetery-only organization. In 1996, the association became the International Cemetery and Funeral Association, expanding its membership to include funeral homes and other related businesses and extending its reach beyond U.S. borders. In 2007, ‘Cremation’ was added to the name to more accurately reflect the operations and goals of its membership.”
Today, the ICCFA is composed of more than 7,500 cemeteries, funeral homes, crematories, memorial designers and related businesses worldwide.
One of the hot topics trending in the funeral industry for 2015, experts predict, will be death DNA. CD Funeral News ConnectingDirectors.com , a Zanesville, Ohio-based online publication for funeral professionals, published by Ryan Thogmartin, who also owns DISRUPT Media, asked in a Dec. 21 post, “Consumers are having discussions daily about DNA, how is your funeral home addressing this emerging subject? The piece by Terri Sullivan, an Emmy Award winning anchor-reporter at ABC 6/Fox 28 in Columbus, Ohio, opened with “a” local funeral home is helping central Ohio families cope with the loss of a loved one by saving a bit of the past for the future. In some cases it could be lifesaving. It’s called a DNA memorial.
“Schoedinger Funeral And Cremation Service has offered it for about a month. A swab is used to collect cells from inside the mouth, which, along with a snippet of hair, is sent off to a lab for processing.
“I think one of the big reasons people are starting to do this is the technology continues to evolve every year on what we can do with genes and dna genetics and so forth,” said Michael Schoedinger. “And what we’re learning is the cremation rate is approaching 50 per cent. Once a person’s been cremated, we can’t reverse the process and collect their DNA. It’s destroyed forever … Schoedinger said the reasons people opt for the service vary. Some use to it determine their risk of disease or certain medical conditions, others want to know more about their family history.
“Schoedinger says in many ways it’s a gift from the past to future generations.” You can read the complete article here at: http://connectingdirectors.com/articles/45459-millions-of-consumers-are-having-this-conversation-is-your-firm-taking-part
“The relevance of DNA to funeral consumers (because we are destroying the DNA of deceased people when we cremate) will continue to emerge as a subject of importance,” Jeff Harbeson of the Roanoke, Virginia area wrote Jan. 1 in a post in The Funeral Commander, his widely followed industry blog. “Will 2015 be the first year a family will sue a funeral home for destroying their loved ones genetic record without telling them?” Harbeson asks. You can read the complete post here at: http://thefuneralcommander.com/2015/01/01/funeral-industry-2014-in-the-rear-view-mirror-2015-in-the-windshield/
Harbeson, who retired from the U.S. military as a captain, got his start in the funeral industry in January 2004 with as a sales consultant with Batesville Casket Company of Batesville, Indiana. He founded The Harbeson Group in January 2010 and was the co-founder of Family Choice Funerals & Cremations in November 2009.
And in a Canadian connection to the death retrieval DNA trend, Harbeson, although not a scientist, was named president last July of CG Labs Inc. in Thunder Bay in northwestern Ontario, founded by its chief scientist, Ryan Lehto, who graduated from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay with a BSc. and in biology and MSc. in molecular biology with a specialization in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) research. Lehto used to work for the university. Harbeson, also a company director, is on board for his specialized marketing experience. As well as the funeral industry, CG Labs, which is based in the McKellar LifeCentre on South Archibald Street, offers expert opinion and services in areas including mass disaster identification; film and television projects; cold case unsolved mysteries (CG Labs once purchased some of Al Capone’s hair at an auction and were able to extract the DNA. It now hangs on the wall, a framed exhibit, so to speak); archaeological sites; and aboriginal land claims.
Last September, CG Labs Inc. began marketing their Secure My DNA brand “to consumers in non-post death situations.” You can watch a 2m6sec YouTube clip called SecureMyDNA here at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GCj6Y82VnY
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