What if the cemetery goes out of business? (classic)
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Hello, this week we are running one of our very favorite classic search engine episodes. It concerns the topic that I think is always humming underneath the thoughts in our minds that we spend a lot of energy not thinking about. Maybe we is just me, but I think it's probably you too. It's a conversation that started with an intriguing question and then gently went a lot of places that surprised me. After these ads, What if the cemetery goes out of business?
Welcome to Search Engine. I'm PJ Vogt. No question too big, no question too small. This week, a question one of our listeners has been wondering about for nearly 15 years. A question about the dead.
Hi Lucas, how's it going? Doing well, how are you doing? I'm doing good. What does your hat say?
Portland Buckaroos. Who are the Buckaroos? They're just like an old hockey team. And what I love about the logo is that like...
It's a hockey-playing cowboy. Oh, yeah. Is he on a horse, but also the horse has ice skates? Yeah, and then he has ice skates also.
This seems like overkill. Well, I love it. It's like he knows that his horse might die. Oh, yeah. And he'll need to have his ice skates.
That's like your interpretation of your own hockey hat feels like a very morbid Rorschach test.
What happens if a cemetery goes out of business?
Lucas, perhaps a fellow given to certain morbid wonderings, which was what had led him here today. His questions stretched all the way back to 2011, back when Lucas was studying advertising in Texas. In one of his classes, he was given an assignment. Find an existing company that might need some help with their brand and copy. And so in his search, he would find himself wandering the world, noticing businesses more, the ways they presented themselves, the choices they made.
And one day I was driving by the cemetery that was the Muslim cemetery. And I was like, oh, that, you know, cemetery could be a cool thing to advertise for. So I went to their website, and it was like the most unhinged thing where they'd written the website in a first-person narrative. What do you mean? Like, I've got the website. I could read it to you if you want. Sure, yeah. Okay. Let me introduce myself. My name is Muslim Cemetery, and trust me, I'm your final destiny. I reside in Denton along Highway 380 West, about 8 miles west of I-35 North. My size is 11.5 acres, and I'm 20 years old. Being quite seasoned, you can imagine at present I am home to about 460 permanent residents, with the heart to accommodate 2,500 more.
So it starts out like that, an unusual piece of ad copy in that the business itself, the cemetery, is addressing you in the first person, but whatever. It's the next paragraph that marks the truly strange pivot. The cemetery, speaking to you on its website, begins to kind of berate you. The writing reads, Whoa.
Whoa. Until a few months ago, I did not have the funds even for my monthly maintenance. However, courtesy of a few Allah-fearing folks who took the lead, they jumped in and rescued me. I hope you understand that I'm the only stable and risk-free 401k investment option you have without fearing for any economic downturns.
It's a kind of sales pitch that might be familiar to you if, like me, you're a devoted public radio listener. The product you're using, for some reason, constantly reminding you that it will die unless you give it more money. It works well enough when it's your local radio host. It's a little weird when the business that's threatening to go out of business is your cemetery. And while I am not an ad critic, the reason this copywriting seems to be not optimal is because the last thing you want to think about as a consumer choosing your final resting place is the idea that the cemetery itself would go out of business. Because then what would happen to you? To your body? But this vivid copywriting, ineffective as a sales pitch, was effective in that it lodged this question in Lucas's mind.
So much so that he found himself wondering about it many years later and decided to email us.
It's always been in the back of my head, this like lonely, sad, desperate cemetery that was out there clawing for help, you know?
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