Marketing Breast Cancer at a Funeral Parlor-Don’t come to my Pink Funeral!

      I saw the article below in the Cleveland Daily Banner as I was  preparing my daily breast cancer articles. I almost jumped out of my chair. I put it in my daily Scoop It Breast Cancer Newspaper and sent notes on Twitter to friends because I was really shocked at what I was reading.  My friend AnneMarie blogged about it in her blog called CHEMOBRAIN…..In The Fog With AM from BC 2 AD , and as I was commenting on her blog I wanted to put the picture of the pink casket to show how ridiculous this is and I realized the best way to get my point across was to write about it here. I couldn’t believe they were serious. So now funeral parlors want to get involved in marketing breast cancer. Do they expect people will use their funeral home because they will wear the new pink blazers during a funeral?

      I am pretty patient about some of the “pinkwashing” that has happened when it comes to breast cancer but this borders on clearly absurd. Pinkwashing is the act of using breast cancer to guilt consumers into buying a product which often times adds to being the cause of breast cancer, or if it had not been for the advent of aiding the cure for breast cancer, they would not have bought the product. I have always loved the color pink, but pink at a funeral is just DEAD WRONG! Do they expect people will use their funeral homes because they will wear the new pink blazers during a funeral?

      This is so ridiculous that either I get very upset or I just laugh. As my mom always says “Laughing is better than crying.” The fact that this funeral home sees this as a fantastic way to market themselves shows they are really missing the message when it comes to how horrible dying from breast cancer really is.

      I just think if companies sincerely want to see an end to people dying from breast cancer, they need to think about what message they are sending. Yesterday I wrote “In the world every 23 seconds someone gets breast cancer and every 69 seconds someone dies from breast cancer.”

This is not an invitation for funeral homes to start celebrating how many more plots and caskets as well as pink blazers they can sell by saying they are going to help breast cancer awareness and give 12% of the pink blazer’s sales to the cause. They said they wanted to give $25,000 to the American Cancer Society for Breast Cancer Research. Since we know that only 2% of all funds that go to research for breast cancer actually goes to the research that causes deaths from breast cancer, their help isn’t even going to make a dent on preventing deaths from breast cancer. To me their marketing message is to have more deaths from breast cancer and they will be happy to have your funeral business. This is crazy!

Excerpts from: Pink Blazers are the new black for Funeral Homes

by DELANEY WALKER, Banner Staff Writer

RALPH BUCKNER FUNERAL HOME services have widened to include pink blazers. Families can request the staff wear these blazers to honor loved ones whose death or life was associated with breast cancer.

Funeral homes across the nation and in Cleveland’s city limits are finally receiving the breast cancer awareness memo: Pink is the new black.

These blazers are currently being sold to funeral homes across the country. The founders felt it would be a good outlet for families to honor loved ones who were involved with breast cancer. This includes survivors, victims and supporters.
Further plans for the pink blazers are currently in the works. John Yopp said the opportunities outside the funeral industry are endless.

Read more: Cleveland Daily Banner – Pink blazers are the new black for funeral homes