Episode 153 - Co-Op Funeralcare “Talking now helps your loved ones later” Ad Reviewed
Funeral arrangements are not an easy conversation topic - but in this week’s episode, Co-op Funeralcare tackle it successfully in their ad, “Talking now helps your loved ones later,” created by Lucky Generals and chosen for us by Contagious.
With some trademark British humour and a series of everyday life scenarios, talking about one’s funeral becomes less of a scary, big event. However, does the ad do enough to connect the consumer with all the other helpful resources Co-op make available online? And how does it all link back to the bigger brand identity?
Join Julie Pender (Senior Marketer and Strategist), Hayley Krasnow (Associate Brand Manager), and Nick Telson (Co-founder of trumpet and Horseplay Ventures) as they review the ad.
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Episode 153 - Co-Op Funeralcare “Talking now helps your loved ones later” Ad Reviewed
Transcript is automatically generated, so not perfect, but you get the idea!
Dan Moseley 0:00
Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Advertisers Watching Ads, the weekly show where we invite brands to review other brands' ads.
Thank you to Contagious, as always, for picking this week's ad. Before we get into them, I will introduce our guests.
Julie Pender 0:37
Hi, everyone. I'm Julie Pender and I am a marketer who works in drinks.
Hayley Krasnow 0:41
Hi, everyone. My name is Hayley Krasnow. I am an Associate Brand Manager based out of Nashville. Tennessee, and I work on a popular pet food brand. Happy to be here.
Nick Telson 0:49
Hi, everyone. I'm Nick. My FMCG background was in L'Oreal, where I was a brand manager for five years, and since then have founded and exited startups.
Dan Moseley 0:59
Brilliant. Yeah. This week's ad is slightly different than usual. So I want to get us straight into it. It is Co-op Funeralcare, "Talking now helps your loved ones later."
So we are going to start with votes out of five. What would you vote for this ad? No fives? Interesting.
Julie Pender 2:20
This Co-op Funeralcare company, which just I am not very familiar with it, just based in the US. Talking about making those conversations much earlier when that you don't necessarily need to have them later in life. You're helping your family members. You're helping your loved ones by having conversations early about, you know, what you want as end of life is approaching you. So you can sympathize with a lot of people that that is a conversation you want to procrastinate. You don't want to talk about it. It's awkward. It's also just very sad. And, you know, it's just not something that you really want to discuss further. So having this ad kind of brings to light the discussion that these situations can happen early and often, and it also can happen across a lot of different scenarios.
Nick Telson 3:05
I thought they brought in very nicely with a real sense of like grounding... very British humour to it as well. And Co-op as a, as a company is, you know, it's all about helping your community and everyone around you. And I thought they got that across quite nicely. That type of advert for me can become very cheesy, corny and make you roll your eyes. But I feel in that the way they did it, it didn't come across like that at all. And it actually felt quite heartwarming.
Julie Pender 3:33
I like the way they executed. I think it was done with quite a bit of appropriate level of respect. They did a very good job of having a diverse demographic. The touch of humour was actually brilliant. The part that I find intriguing... So I am a Canadian based in London. The part that still intrigues me about brands here in the UK is that Co-op is actually known to me as my local grocery store. I'm intrigued from a brand point of view about what does Co-op stand for from a consumer point of view and how much of this is about Co-op total brand building and Co-op having awareness of this? You know, how often do you buy a funeral? You know, for yourself? I'm going to guess most people don't. It would be very interesting to see some insight in terms of how people approach their own mortality and their own death. But then who makes the decision? Who is the influencer in this kind of purchase cycle? That is a terrible way to talk about this kind of really big life event. But it intrigues me and the Co-op part of that. So I hadn't, I didn't know Co-op did funeral care until I watched that ad. So now I'm aware! They drove awareness for me.
Hayley Krasnow 4:34
So I went on their website and I thought there was two great things. So obviously they have a conversation starter of like how to get these conversations started, you know, with your loved ones. I did think it was not a lot of information, but I mean, it was very short and concise. But there was an area and I'm not really sure how like first-party data exchange works in the UK. However, there was a conversation starter where you, as possibly the consumer could write down your funeral wishes and then either email it to yourself or possibly a loved one just to start that conversation. So it gives you a moment to like, sit down, reflect, think about what you want. Put it in writing that maybe a great way to start a conversation or just to say, "Hey, I'm throwing this in your inbox, reference it when you need it later." So I actually really liked that. But I do think they need a little bit bigger call to action on their website to get people to use that. But I did think it was a good way to at least start the conversation.
Julie Pender 5:32
It's just like a wholesome topic. Who can watch that ad and go, "We definitely shouldn't talk about this, shouldn't talk about this." I think everybody looks at this and goes, "Yeah, I probably need to have this conversation with somebody in my life. Either about myself or about my family members." Is anybody going to go and start a conversation? Does this actually inspire anybody to do something? Because I'll speak for myself and I, I'm still like, "Yeah, that's such a good idea. I'm not going to do it."
Nick Telson 5:59
It's funny you say that because a conversation I've had recently with my mom who, who loves traveling to India. She's quite spiritual. And she said, "Okay, well, when I pass, I want my ashes scattered in the Ganges. And I was, I was like, "Really? like, can we not do like the River Thames? Like, can I FedEx you out to, to India?" Does it have to be the Ganges? Of all the rivers... You know, there is humour to be having this conversation. Personally, I don't necessarily like talking about it, but it's almost like you're jinxing it. I feel like you're back in school, you're like, "Okay, well, if we're going to talk about it, it's going to happen sooner rather than later." So I think there's that element to talking about death is you don't want to jinx it, which is pretty stupid, I think, in the grand scheme of things. But yeah, I think there is definitely humour to be had in that conversation, and I think the advert touches on that very well as well.
Hayley Krasnow 6:52
Another thing that I feel like has been a little bit of a trend on either social media or just sometimes that, you know, you talk with friends. There is a little bit of a joking element, though, when you think about or when you start talking about your funeral, right? So you're thinking, this is my last final party. I don't want anything sad. I want everyone to have like an actual celebration of life, but only remember the happy times. It's one of those things, though, that it's like I feel like we've all kind of jokingly talked about it. It's something that I know that I need to do with my parents. I just don't want to but you're also thinking like, you know, some of these scenarios... I mean, I had not really thought about bringing it up while shopping or bringing it up while hiking. So I do think it, at least starts you thinking about it and needing to have the conversation and maybe, maybe while you're doing something else can be just enough of distraction to make it not as painful.
Julie Pender 7:44
I think the older you get, dealing with your mortality becomes a little bit harder. I love that they're inspiring it because I think it's actually a great conversation to have. Don't wait for the crisis when it happens, you then have to try and anticipate. And for me, it's a similar conversation about organ donation. These are all these really kind of emotional, highly, highly kind of controversial topics that people don't want to discuss and they'd rather avoid. There is this, I think, a demographic reality in terms of where there's quite a bit of money as well in terms of targeting and there was a huge hype around millennials and a lot of kind of surface descriptions of how to target millennials, Gen Z. And now I think we're, we're peeling back that onion and getting a lot more consumer insight and a lot more rich data to understand it. I think there's a huge amount of conversations going on in workplaces, even talking about menopause, all these, these really taboo subjects that we're starting to break open and having Co-op do that in a way that is, I think, really done with, with respect and in the right tone. It's really well done.
Nick Telson 8:42
When big FMCGs try and have this conversation, it can come across as quite inauthentic, but I think the brand of Co-op, fits very nicely with the tone they offered in that advert. I see that they did, yeah, a lot of online content around this space as well. They provided a lot of content around the actual core products of paying for a funeral. That's really the only downside. They don't point you towards their website, but maybe like, you know, "To learn more about grief or something, please visit our website." Maybe could've been the only addition that I would have said because there's some great content on their site about that.
Dan Moseley 9:18
Last one, if you were the brand manager involved in this, or the team, would you sign off in its current format? Maybe with some changes? Or definitely not approved? All right. Well, thank you all for joining us. We'll be back next week with more ads, but until then, yeah, thank you to our guests and we'll speak soon.
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