Special People

A cemetery advertising its parks and mortuaries? What the heck for?
Drop dead deadlines. Ideas getting killed. Mothers (and David Ogilvy) turning over their graves. We’ve heard it all. But it didn’t stop us dead on our tracks (yes, we can’t help ourselves either).

With a very small and limited budget, this TV spot/content video had to fulfill several multi-fold goals––
1) remind the public about this local, but landmark brand in the Southern California area (Los Angeles and Orange County)
2) share the brand’s 100 plus-year creed and make it relatable today
3) challenge very limiting perceptions about the cemetery industry by humanizing it
4) recruit quality and values-aligned new employees
5) and inspire and motivate current employees.

All above lofty goals are typically projects that each get their own budget and require their own videos. But with a small regional brand such as Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks and Mortuaries, we had to make do with one meaningful spot to service all points.

Forest Lawn took on this challenge and turned the long list of limitations on its head by simply distilling it down to one guiding principle––Caring Service.
By declaring a far greater stance on the subject of "quality of life" and embracing love and compassion for another as our Reason to Be or Manifesto, we took ownership of being stewards of life, not death. While the advertising is for a cemetery, it’s for the bigger celebration of our humanity in life.
Genuine caring is what ultimately separates us and elevates our cemetery from just a plot of land, however beautiful. The Forest Lawn employees are the secret sauce––these kind, helpful and well-meaning individuals that come to a person’s or family’s side during their darkest hour.
And in a time when employees are only staying at jobs on an average of 2 to 4 years at best, Forest Lawn employees average on 15 years. Some even 35. Or even lifers.