Looking Back on a Unique Creative Challenge for TV: Our First Funeral Home

April 7th, 2008 by Kevin Flynn

About ten years ago Ray Martino received a call from the Bartolomeo & Perotto Funeral Home. They were interested in having us prepare a television campaign to promote their services. Hmm, that was a first. A funeral home, interesting challenge. Plus, they had very little budget for creative production. (Chris Flynn and I once got a request to do some ads for a strip club. No kidding. In a surprising display of maturity, we politely declined.)

Anyway, given Martino Flynn’s penchant for adolescent behavior, one can easily imagine how our brainstorming sessions would quickly devolve into trying to outdo one another with comedic funeral home story lines. We had some funny concepts. But, of course, a funeral is a deeply serious and emotional event—a celebration of someone’s life. Once our team settled into the task at hand—while working with fiscal handcuffs—the real conceptual work was done. Most agencies can produce good television with big budgets. The trick is to create something great with little or no budget. Add a client that’s a funeral home and the challenge grows.

We believe we were up to the task. We used home movie footage from Kathy Down’s family. Kathy is the wife of Tim Downs, our Executive Creative Director. The resulting TV spot is quite poignant and emotional. Brought a tear to my eye when I first saw the spot. What do you think? Does it work? Is it powerful? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks.

This entry was posted by Kevin Flynn on Monday, April 7th, 2008 and is filed under Advertising, Clients, Creative, TV, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.