August 11, 2010

Service Experience: Cemetery Edition



The Wall Street Journal reports:
To Attract Future Customers, Cemeteries Hold Parties to Die For

The video below does a fair job describing the idea. Basically, open up the cemetery to events that would normally happen in a park in an attempt to get future people to think about the cemetery when they have the need.
"It gets them into the cemetery, but not in a scary way, and if they have a nice experience, maybe they'll say, 'I want my family there,' " explains William F. Griswold, Jr., executive superintendent of Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford, Conn., which holds regular scavenger hunts."
 The article pitches the idea as soley a marketing one, i.e., use these events to sell plots, but I think it sounds a little like a case of utilizing capacity of a fixed asset.  Just like using a kitchen to serve food all day instead of just dinner, cemetery have capacity as a venue for events that may include be more than just grieving and memorializing.

To be sure, the idea doesn't come with a bit of squeamishness.  What are your thoughts?

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