Read The American Way of Death Revisited Online
Authors: Jessica Mitford
Set forth for British viewers to gape at in wonder are a funeral directors’ trade fair at which are displayed a gruesome array of embalming fluids, tools for removing the innards, cosmetics for corpses, and a dazzling assortment of caskets, culminating in “our top-of-the-line” item priced at $85,000. Jerry Pullin, SCI’s man in London, explains:
We feel the opportunities are greatest in offering a broader range of merchandise and services which will enhance our revenue base by offering enhanced consumer choices.
L. William Heiligbrodt, president of SCI, tells the viewing audience why the average price of Australian funerals rose by 40 percent after his company entered that market:
We have found in Australia in the short time we’ve been there that people have chosen to spend more on funerals. I want again to emphasize “chosen.” It’s been their choice. The fact that our revenues per funeral have grown in Australia is because the Australian public have demanded it. In the U.K., that’s our goal, as well.
There is a segment on SCI’s immediate predecessor, one Howard Hodgson, known as the “yuppie undertaker,” a great fan of Mrs. Thatcher and one of the entrepreneurial stars of the Iron Lady’s regime. He describes how he achieved economies of scale via the “clustering” strategy, refurbishing funeral parlors, buying new hearses, and adding services like embalming, in fact, preparing the ground for SCI, to whom he eventually sold.
According to “Over My Dead Body,” 50 percent of the British dead were embalmed in the Hodgson era; yet the
Independent
of January 7, 1992, quoted Peter Hall, general secretary of the British Institute of Embalming, as saying that “a quarter of all corpses in this country are now embalmed.” He voiced the unappetizing suggestion that “the difference between a well-embalmed body and an untreated one is the difference between a plum and a prune.” If these figures are
accurate, Mr. Hodgson had succeeded in less than three years in doubling the number of British dead transformed from prune to plum, an encouraging portent for the newly arrived SCI.
I was fortunate to be given what is known in the trade as a “cameo appearance” in the video. This took place in a large and well-appointed undertaker’s showroom where Derek Gibbs, owner of the London Casket Company, explained the offerings. He obligingly raised the casket lids to display a variety of beauteous linings in “luxury velvet” or “high-quality crepe.” Best of all was “The Last Supper,” described in the catalogue as “mahogany finished poplar timber, cream madeira crepe interior. Scene of The Last Supper colour insert in lid. Swing bar handles and adjustable bed. Angel corner pieces supplied on request at no extra cost.”
“Oh, how absolutely smashing,” I said. “I think they’re lovely, they’re absolutely top-quality,” replied Mr. Gibbs. “We do not hard sell them at all. They really just sell themselves.” We had the following conversation:
JM: But they must cost a fortune. First off, how much is the wholesale cost?
DG: Well, we supply purely to the trade, so what funeral directors do in this country is they buy the casket from us, and then they add it to the cost of their traditional funeral service.
JM: How much do you charge them for this, for example? You charge them how much?
DG: Well, I would be loath to say, because as I say we supply to the trade and they would actually add this to their traditional funeral.
JM: That’s why I wanted to find out. How much do you pay for it?
DG: I don’t really want to discuss what we pay—is this a rehearsal?
Long accustomed to the reticence of American funeral directors on the sensitive subject of the wholesale cost of caskets—one of the best-kept trade secrets—I was not surprised by Mr. Gibbs’s reluctance to disclose prices. But as it turned out, this was by no means the end of the matter. Some weeks later, on January 30, 1995, Mr. Gibbs
wrote to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, which is responsible for maintaining standards of fairness and privacy. (Its function is roughly parallel to that of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.) His letter was full of anguish:
Apart from one small moment, I thought that I handled myself well and gave sensible and reasonable answers. I accepted that my products are very foreign and extravagant but explained that there was a demand for elaborate high quality burial caskets.
It was to be my first appearance on television and so I told all my customers, friends and family to be sure to watch it. You can therefore imagine my acute embarrassment when the program turned out to be a complete hatchet job on the industry that I serve.…
At the time, I tried to laugh it off.… As time goes on, I felt increasingly angered by the whole affair. Every customer that I visit taunts me with the phrase, “This is only a rehearsal, isn’t it?” …
Reading this letter, I could not fail to be impressed by the poignancy of Mr. Gibbs’s experience. However, it hasn’t hurt his business. In April 1996 he told an interviewer that his casket sales for 1994–95 had been 312—up from 242 the year before. “It was slow going to begin with,” he said, “but our sales have grown steadily over the years. This last quarter, January, February, March, has been our busiest quarter ever. So it’s getting better. People like the idea of preservation. That is the point of the sale.”
Fast-forward to 1996. SCI has now held sway in this scepter’d isle for two years, long enough for a preliminary estimate of its impact on the British funeral scene. The
Guardian
led off February 27, 1996, with the headline
HAVE A NICE DEATH:
The Americans pioneered a fast-food, hard-sell approach to death. It is not the British Way. Sarah Bosely and Peter Godwin investigate creeping disneyfication—and soaring prices—in the British funeral industry.
It’s the ultimate commercialisation—the final tastelessness. McDeath is on its way to a funeral parlour near you. The
Americans are here, although you may not yet have noticed it. We British don’t talk about these things. But there they are … gearing up to effect a huge change in the British way of death.
The BBC’s “Public Eye” obliged with a documentary broadcast on February 17 entitled “Pay Now, Die Later.” Unsurprisingly, the presenter tells us that SCI refused to be interviewed for the program. But as is often the case, some of the best copy was mined from “internal documents” procured by some light-fingered sleuth on the “Public Eye” team.
For example, we are treated to “notes” issued to “SCI funeral directors in Britain to help them to overcome their ‘difficulty combining their helping role with that of a business role’ when helping a client to choose a coffin.” And here are the notes, eerily reminiscent of SCI’s directive to its Australian employees (see
chapter 16
, “A Global Village of the Dead”). It’s a small, small world.
Present the coffin range to its best advantage.
Direct the attention of the family to the highest quality item on display (perhaps the Regal).
Next present the Crown.
Then present the Classic Royal, and so on in descending price order.
Know how to respond to objections: Respond with empathy, not defensiveness or aggression or impatience. For example, “I can understand your concern about the price but let me explain the difference in design and manufacture again.” Or for example, “Yes, I can see your point about them just going into the ground, but we need to provide an extensive range like this in order to suit everyone’s taste.”
So far so good, but that’s only for starters. Through more internal documents, “Public Eye” discovered that SCI was disappointed with the low income from “memorial sales,”
*
which, according to a
memo to its general managers, is “without a doubt the single most important area of our activity to be improved.” To remedy the situation, SCI launched a new sales program, its details spelled out in the memo:
All families that we have conducted a cremation [for] in 1995 but who have not purchased a memorial from us … to be contacted by letter with a phone contact follow-up where possible …
In the case of some of our larger volume locations, this will require our contacting upwards of 1,000 to 1,500 families.… Do not be overwhelmed if there are large numbers of families to be contacted. Large numbers only mean big opportunities! If all you do is post 100 letters a week, this is 100 possible sales that you would otherwise not have.
The unfortunate inclination of many survivors to scatter cremated ashes over sea, land, or in the Gardens of Remembrance adjacent to British crematoria has long been a major headache for the funeral industry, resulting as it does in the loss of lucrative niche and urn sales. In England, with its soaring cremation rate, the problem is particularly acute. SCI’s solution is to meet it head-on by sending a lavish memorial brochure with color pictures of available offerings, accompanied by the following poem:
Scatter me not to restless winds
Nor toss my ashes to the sea
.
Remember now those years gone by
When living gifts I gave to thee
.
Remember now the happy times
,
The family ties we shared
;
Don’t leave my resting place unmarked
,
As though you never cared
.
Deny me not one final gift
For all who come to see
,
A single lasting proof that says
I loved, and you loved me
.
Who could resist this admonishment, at once stern and loving, delivered as a direct order by a voice from the Great Beyond? Apparently quite a few people, such as Helen Lewis, who, according to “Public Eye,” was “particularly incensed” when the poem and brochure were sent to her from SCI’s Chichester crematorium where her father had been cremated. “I realize that that was just another ploy to get you to spend some money and do something with the person’s ashes,” she said. “It’s so awful when I think of that poem, because it’s so manipulative, really.”
There is more in store for the grieving family—SCI is not quite through with them yet, for now is the optimum moment to get them thinking about future funerals. It is, in fact, “pre-need” time. “Public Eye” has obtained a report written by a senior British SCI manager sent to the U.S. to study the company’s operation there. Fresh from this illuminating experience, he tells colleagues how to canvas families who have used an SCI funeral home in the weeks after the bereavement. Some pointers:
Immediate service follow-up is based on the somewhat harsh premise that you’ve got to get ’em before the tears are dry. Engaging the emotions of the client is the key to a successful sale. “Freezing the cost tells them why, but emotion makes them buy.”
SCI was predictably none too pleased with the “Public Eye” effort. On February 29, less than two weeks after the broadcast, CEO Peter Hindley produced yet another internal memo addressed to “All Staff,” designed to deflect the blow:
By now many of you will have seen the “Public Eye” programme which was based on changes in the funeral industry in the U.K. and in particular changes that SCI, in the programme’s opinion, could introduce. I wanted you to know that SCI is firmly committed to improving standards and services and client choice with the highest regard and respect for traditions that exist in the U.K. We will clearly be innovative and through better service we will increase our market share.
The programme, in my opinion, was motivated by some of
our competitors who are probably concerned that they will not be able to provide the same level of service as ourselves.…
You can be proud of being a member of SCI, and I would not wish you to allow either the media or our competitors to distract you from the task of providing our families with the best possible service.
That not “All Staff” were receptive to this appeal to their loyalty is evidenced by some extremely salty comments made to my London researcher by former SCI employees who quit around the time of the “Public Eye” program and others who still have an SCI connection.
Some SCI defectors, finding themselves in a fairly dicey position vis à vis the industry, spoke on condition of anonymity. Mr. A, as I will call him, who had worked first as “arranger” then as “director” at Plantsbrook, stayed the course for a scant two weeks after SCI bought up his firm.
“I didn’t like the way it was run,” he said. “We sold set packages—a major rip-off. We were given about an hour with each client to find out what they could afford, then had to sell within this range or slightly above. We were not allowed to offer cheap funerals unless we had permission.
“It’s all about high-powered selling. The average member of the public only gets an inkling that the funeral home is American-owned when the final bill is sent out. The Americans are just like a lot of parasites eating away at the country.” He emphasized that “the main message to get through to everyone is, one, ask if the funeral director is independent, and, two, get an estimate from at least two different funeral directors.”
Green Undertakings, where Mr. A is now working, is far more to his liking. “We don’t offer packages. We ask a client what part of the funeral arrangements they want us to do,” he said. “There is no need to say good-bye by spending a lot of money. We encourage families to provide their own bearers. As to embalming, I haven’t embalmed a single body at Green Undertakings, though I would if asked.”
Mr. B, as I will call him, had been employed for four years by a Plantsbrook funeral parlor; several months after SCI took over, he resigned. “I was very unhappy with them,” he said. “I left because I couldn’t stand it. SCI just chases the buck; their commercialism is going to ruin them in the end.”
SCI has its own canny method of gradually softening up the new British employees, a form of behavior modification designed to ease them into acceptance of the American Way. For the first six months or so, Mr. B said, nothing really changed. Then, all employees were summoned to a meeting in a smart Kensington hotel where a new range of coffins was unveiled, amid assurance by the SCI mentors that they were not going to promote high-pressure sales techniques. “The old Plantsbrook range was made up of typically English-looking, pleasant coffins,” said Mr. B. But the new lot was proof to him that despite their protestations, “the Americans are committed to a very subtle form of high pressure.”