A friend and I went shopping at Wal-Mart last week, when I pointed out all the people who carry six-packs of Gatorade, soda or water on the edge of their shopping cart and marvelled at how wide that particular “meme” had spread.

He was confused and had a question and a comment.  First, he hadn’t seen the practice of putting the bottles on the cart, but he liked it.  Second, what’s a meme?

If you don’t know about the bottle placement on a shopping cart, here’s a simple diagram.

By wedging the six-packs over the top edges of the cart, the user frees up space for other groceries.  I’ve seen folks pushing carts where the top edges were completely covered with six-packs.  Made the cart look like a boat with too many bouys and bumpers!

But back to his question.  A meme is an idea that gets passed from human to human.  First described by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, a meme is anything (song, joke, religion, tool or process) that gets passed around the culture either by conscious transmission (“Check out this cool new song!”) or non-deliberate transmission (like wearing your collar turned up).  You can read the full Wikipedia entry for meme here.

When I was a teenager, the cool kids wore their pants folded over and rolled at the bottom.  I have no idea why, and when I see it now, I wonder about the collective mental health of my generation. 

But pegged pants were a meme, even if we didn’t know what the word meant.  Other examples?  How about beehives, The Macarena or Who Let the Dogs Out?

There are even memes in funeral service.  Direct cremation is a meme.  How many times have you heard “just bury me in a pine box” from a potential client?  That’s a meme.  Color photo memorial folders?  A meme made possible by the advent of cheaper color printing.

We can recognize memes pretty early, if we’re looking for them.  But let’s face it:  most funeral professionals haven’t even figured out that a memorial tribute video is NOT a strange request!  (one of the biggest firms I know still forces their 12+ firms share a single flat screen television and DVD player for services!)

So take advantage of your competitors’ blindness and let your community know how in tune you are with their “memes.” 

If you need a hint, here’s a partial list of new(er) funeral industry memes and some potential ones:

Memorial videos
Cremation jewelry
Online memorial tributes
After-funeral receptions
Attended cremations
Funeral home concierge services
Pet memorialization services from funeral homes
Video tombstones

It’s fascinating to watch different generations answer important questions about death.

Say, for instance, that you want to pre-plan Uncle Fred’s funeral.  And say he’s a big trout fisherman (he’s big, not the trout).

And now let’s say Fred wants to know if they make urns with fish painted on them because that will help him decide whether he wants to be buried our cremated.

Here’s how each generation (typically) approaches this:

The Greatest Generation – Tell Fred that the family always get’s buried and that you’ll make sure he has a nice service.  If pressured, call the funeral director who’s handled every funeral in your family and ask for his direction.

The Baby Boomer Generation – Call a few funeral homes and ask friends who’ve recently handled a cremation.  Listen to the evening news or read magazines for more details.

Generation X (and the lesser known Generation Jones) – Search online for “trout urn” or “trout cremation urn.”  Check out websites for funeral homes and cremation societies.  Forward an email to Uncle Fred with several links included.

Generation Y (and the Boomerang Generation) – Blog about the need for a trout urn.  Get feedback from friends about urns they’ve used and the different options they’ve seen online.  Check out an urnmaker’s MySpace page.  Watch YouTube videos about hows urns are made.  Buy they urn from Amazon or another site.

Many funeral directors are fortunate enough to still be dealing with the “Greatest Generation” customers.  But the recent push toward more “personalization” and cremation means we’re finally seeing Baby Boomers make the majority of the funeral decisions.

And while this has put pressure on directors to be better at navigating their customers’ habits, it also signals that the next generations are getting closer to making the decisions.

As industry experts, we’ve told funeral directors that cremation is inevitable, but that you can make up the difference with urn and memorial service sales.  (I’m including myself in this criticism, as I’ve been a big proponent of up-selling cremation services)

But when products that were once hard to get (old conversation – him: ”Where do you buy an urn?” her: “From a funeral home, I guess.”) are moved into the open market of the Internet, prices drop and profits go down.

So while an older person will take whatever the funeral director offers that looks like a fisherman’s urn, a Gen-Y or Gen-X customer has already bought this urn:

urn featured on Fly Fish Magazine blog

Even better (for the customer) it cost only $189 and was shipped right to their house.  And now Uncle Fred can sleep well, knowing that his urn is safely on the mantle, waiting for the day he’ll occupy it.

Only, the funeral home is out a nice profit and the online urn seller (who was probably wearing his pajamas when his client’s credit card was processed and the order logged) helps to turn the funeral industry from a commodity-based or product-based one into a service industry.

Where are we headed?

This article was inspired by a blog post that popped up in my Google Alerts.  I got the info about the different generations from the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.  Uncle Fred is NOT based upon a real person.

In his blog post, What I Said at My Granddaughter’s Funeral, John Piper shares how the death of his full-term stillborn granddaughter affected him, even though he didn’t know her:

Being Felicity’s grandfather means that I have felt the loss through her mother, my daughter-in-law Molly. For her entire life she depended on you more than anyone. You fed her, you cleansed her, you supported her, you protected her, you knew her better than anyone. The grace that God has given you to love her greatly and let her go is amazing. Christ is on display in your life.

He shares how each of the folks who have felt the loss have affected him.  It’s quite beautiful and reminds us that even the death of an unborn family member reverberates across the lives of our clients.

I’ve been asked what is the most dangerous thing facing the funeral industry today.  Some think it’s cremation, and I can see why the steady march toward this less expensive service makes some shudder.  But that’s not it.

Some say it’s the shrinking nuclear family, leaving fewer people to grieve.

Still others claim its an economic problem – folks just don’t plan or save for funerals anymore.

I say no, it’s not really any of these, although they are all important issues that need to be addressed.

The most dangerous thing facing the funeral industry is irrelevance.  Not the irrelevance of memorializing the deceased; John Piper shows us how important it is to remember even a baby who the family never got to meet.

No, it’s the irrelevance of the funeral home, the funeral director and the traditional funeral.  Baby boomers are just now beginning to die in larger numbers and the funerals they choose are an indication of what’s to come. 

The funeral director who tries to offer the same kinds of funerals they’ve done for the last twenty years is in for a rude awakening.  The funeral director who won’t allow people to drink coffee or soda in his building because it might stain the carpet should be worried about the red ink that will soon creep up the balance sheet.

Stubborn businesspeople (even in other industries) think they have a monopoly because their customers have only two choices:  choose the product/service they offer, no matter how inadequate or ill-fitting, or go without.

And since folks seldom go without “necessities”, like food, basic phone service or funerals, why offer a better alternative, when there’s no motivation to do any better?

Unfortunately for funeral professionals, their begrudging clients have found the alternative:  foregoing a funeral for something else.

Two of the last three deaths in my family resulted in direct cremation with a memorial service.  And I WORK in the industry.  Imagine the experiences of those who can’t try to talk their families into full services.

If you don’t offer what people want, they can (and will) go elsewhere.  Many will treat funerals like weddings and plan their own.  In fact, a lot of direct cremations are in response to a belief that “we can do it better than an expensive funeral director.”

How do we combat this shift in attitudes?

I’ll try to answer that question next week!