I am always amazed at what is happening in the funeral industry that I have not caught on to yet.  My friend, Dave Westburg, who operates Billboard Insider blog and who was instrumental in telling me that I have the knowledge to start a death care industry blog, just scooped me on something that I had not seen before in my own industry.

Dave contacted me and told me that he was doing a short story on a funeral home that uses electronic billboards to announce deaths in their community.  He was running the story because the funeral home was putting up four digital billboards to honor the life of evangelist Billy Graham — even though I am pretty sure that the funeral home did not handle the services for Mr. Graham.

The Presley Funeral Home of Cookeville, Tennessee, and at least a couple of other funeral homes have now solved a problem when there is not a daily newspaper in the community.  They simply use electronic billboards to announce the death to the community.  According to the article on Billboard Insider that you can read here, the billboard company also creates a small billboard to give to the family as a momento.

Funeral Director Daily take:  There is always something that you can do to push client family service and satisfaction.  I think that this is a great addition to the service a funeral home can provide, albeit only when the family approves of the idea – I’m not so sure that I would want my picture on a billboard at any time — even after death.

On another side of the subject, however, from a business perspective. . . this could be an “add on” charge to those families that wanted it done and would be one of those instances where, in good value to the client family and in good taste, you could actually profit and get a dose of advertising for your firm out there at the same time.

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