By Joey Haas
Transcription: Interview with Sharon Price and Kersha Taitano from Guam Windward Memorial
Megan:
Welcome and thanks for joining us at Funeral Innovations: Trends, Tips and Tech. In this chat, we’re going to talk with industry leaders, discuss marketing trends, technology innovation, and talk about how digital marketing helps you better serve your families. My name is Megan and I am the Client Success Manager here at Funeral Innovations.
Heather:
And I’m Heather. I’m the Director of Marketing at Funeral Innovations.
Megan:
And today we are very pleased to be talking with Sharon and Kersha from Guam Windward Memorial just to learn about some really cool things they’ve been doing to serve families during the pandemic. As all of you know, the novel Coronavirus pandemic has really reshaped the way we interact with one another and change how we do business. However, it hasn’t changed the basic human need to grieve a lost loved one. So that’s why we asked Sharon and Kersha today to join us because they’ve done some really creative things to connect with their community members during the pandemic. Some things we’re going to talk about today is just seeing virtual events that they’ve done that have really connected their community members to their firms. So again, welcome, Sharon and Kersha. Thanks for being on our conversation today.
Sharon:
We’re happy to be here. Thank you for inviting us.
Megan:
Yeah, of course. So let’s just dive right into it then. So I, I mentioned you guys have had some really great virtual events in the midst of the pandemic, you know, because of the stay at home orders and social distancing firms have had to find alternative ways. We host usually in-person events. So you kind of can just talk about the last couple of events that you have had, whether, I know you’ve done an Easter egg hunt that was virtual and I’m a virtual bingo, but can you just talk about, you know, how you were initially supposed to have those in-person and how you adapted those to a virtual setting?
Sharon:
Sure. So basically every year at Guam Windward Memorial, we try to have some type of Easter event and we had a huge event planned for the community for Easter. And of course, we had to cancel that to keep everyone safe. But our community is very close-knit here on Guam. Which for people who don’t know, it’s an Island in the Pacific near Japan, I guess, Japan and the Philippines area. So, well, people are like, where’s Guam? So that’s what we are. So we’re a very small, close-knit community and everybody looks forward to community events to bring people together. So we had to move that to a virtual Easter egg hunt and we literally had to figure out how to do that within just a week or two. So we looked at some scavenger hunt apps and looked at how to integrate Facebook and how to integrate our website and things like that. So we went with a scavenger hunt app. Everybody loved it. We had, I can’t even remember, 500 participants, which was actually about double of what we would have had in person. So the reach was much further. The community was so grateful to have something to do for Easter weekend for the kids who were stuck at home. So the Easter egg hunt ended up being absolutely huge. And from that, we’re actually going to integrate the scavenger hunt app again for Memorial Day and go with it that way. And then going forward when the social distancing and stay at home orders are lifted for us, we’ll integrate the scavenger hunt app all over the island with everything. sort of culminating at Guam Windward Memorial to bring more people to the cemetery to see how beautiful it is there.
Heather:
Oh, I just had a quick question. Can you kind of describe what the experience of the app was, Sharon?
Sharon:
So we use the app called Scavify, and basically it’s super easy to set up a scavenger hunt. Scavify is normally for like an in-person scavenger hunt where people go to locations to take pictures or selfies or find QR codes and things like that. But what we did is we hired a company to create a video of Guam Windward Memorial and we had digital Easter eggs in the video, so that people could still see how beautiful it was and they could pretend that they were like walking through the cemetery looking for Easter eggs. And then they would take a picture, a screenshot of the Easter egg that they found in the video, and they would submit it through the scavenger hunt app. They would get points for that. And then at the end of the day, there were lots of different ways that they could earn points. They could earn points by watching the video and submitting pictures of screenshots of all the eggs. They could earn points by solving a puzzle. They could earn points by doing a crossword. They could earn points by submitting selfies. I even had them, I mean, we, we made it fully interactive where people actually had to do things that they could do at home. Like we had them doing the chicken dance and they had to make a video of themselves doing the chicken dance and they got points for submitting the video of the chicken dance, and they got extra points if it was a really good chicken dance, but I watched a lot of videos of chicken dancing.
Megan:
That’s amazing.
Sharon:
Yeah. I mean we’d had them do and it was fun for them because they could incorporate their whole family in the chicken dance or we had them seeing it. If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands. We had them do all kinds of fun, you know, video or selfie type interactive things. Not just watching the video cause that would have been, you know, sort of boring and that would be just like promotional, you know, hyper whatever. But so we made it a lot of fun for them and I can’t even tell you how many, we had hundreds of people sending us emails and saying thank you, thank you for doing this, thank you for helping our community, you know, through this difficult time, etc. So it really ended up being much more of a benefit to us. It was a lot less expensive. I would say a third of the price and effort of what it would have been if it were an in-person event. And the result was astronomical as far as, you know, goodwill in the community and people seeing or are cemetery for the first time on video and they’re like, wow, it’s so beautiful out there. I want to go and visit just to see how pretty it is. So it was definitely a huge win for us.
Heather:
That’s terrific. And it sounds like you really provided value to your community, education, and fun, instead of just making it, like you said, a marketing piece.
Sharon:
Well that is, that is our whole theme for our cemetery is celebrating every, every precious moment of life. So whether you’re celebrating, you know, the living or whether you’re celebrating the life of a person who has passed in your family or friends, it’s all about celebrating life, every precious moment and making every moment precious.
Heather:
That makes total sense. Megan, do you have another question?
Megan:
Yeah. So, so Sharon, those are all great things. And like you said, it sounds like, you know, initially, you know, on such short notice you had to turn that in-person event to online and you talked about some of the benefits of what that event was. But what would you say would be the biggest benefit that you found of having it turn into that virtual event that you maybe weren’t expecting or just that you were happy with how it turned out?
Sharon:
So I would see the benefits would be having a lot more people able to participate and having it be a lot less expensive than actually doing a physical event. Not to say that we won’t do physical events in the future, but this was, it was w we were shocked in a very happy way. We were very shocked. We were like, wow, this actually works out really well. So I would say this, doing something like that out of the box and getting really creative. I think a lot of it though was the fact that everybody is stuck at home. And they are looking for things to do. They are looking for ways to have fun and ways to occupy the children. And I think a lot of that, a lot of this was, you know, a way to keep the kids occupied. The second one was children, you know, for extended periods of time and not able to give them something to do. This is, I think that was one of the reasons it was such a huge response is because, you know, trying to find things for the kids to do.
Megan:
Sure. And so you, you touched on your Memorial Day and that you are planning or are hoping to do an event there. Can you kind of just touch on that if it would be, like you said, a similar kind of scavenger hunt or what are you guys planning to do for that event?
Sharon:
Well, what we’re thinking of for that event because our government is planning on lifting state home orders here very shortly because we haven’t had any new cases on the island for I think two weeks now. So we’re, we’re in a good place. Obviously we still want to promote social distancing and being safe and staying away from others as much as possible so that we can continue lifting some of the restrictions that have been put in place and keeping everybody safe. But now that people are going to be able to get out of their house, we’ll do a real scavenger hunt where they would have to go to locations on island specific to veterans and we’re a huge military community, so we would give them places where they can go to, you know, recognize the memorials of the military on Island and things like that. So they would take pictures and then we would have it culminate with photographs, taking selfies or what have you, at Guam Windward Memorial, not as a public group event, but on their own going to Guam Windward Memorial and, you know, taking a picture of one of our statues or, you know, something like that on their own. So it would be not a stay at home event, but it would not, it would also not be a group event. It would just help people get out of the house.
Megan:
Sure. That sounds great. That sounds fantastic. You know, as we talk about whether it’s in person or virtual, but for those that are still looking to, like you said, you’ve had so much success with the virtual, you definitely wanted to, you know, make some of those into the teacher with some of your in-person. Do you have any tips for firms who may have had to cancel in-person events or they’re just not ready to do them yet and they want to transition over into an online platform? And do you have any recommendations or just best practices that you’ve learned while hosting a few of these virtual events?
Sharon:
I would say think outside of the box. Think about what your community likes to do. Like for instance, our community here in Guam loves to play bingo. Loves, I mean bingo is huge. We actually have bingo halls and every little village we have a bingo hall. And so there, you know, so you think about what your community likes to do, what they want to do, what they’re missing. And try to find a way to do that online. And there are so many apps out there, there are so many digital platforms out there and they’re so cost-effective. Like our bingo game costs us $30. Yeah, we can get 500 unique bingo cards digital bingo cards for 30 bucks. And then we have a Facebook live bingo game and everybody loves it, you know, so that’s working out really well. It’s a lot less expensive. So I would say, you know, save, save the money for your in-person events. And look for the sort of easy way to do an online event using some of the apps that are available. Using Facebook definitely. We haven’t gone into any type of the Zoom parties or anything like that, but I think Facebook is working out pretty well for us. But there are so many apps. Just all you have to do is Google, you know, figure out what you want to do for your community and Google the different apps that are available for that.
Heather:
That’s great tips. And would you say anything to people who are nervous about trying to break into the sort of this digital experimentation?
Sharon:
Well, neither Kersha or I had experience doing scavenger hunts or bingo or Facebook. I mean, I’ve done Facebook live before, not by choice, but I mean just for fun on my personal page. But I, you know, we’re not, we’re not here to enter the digital stuff. And Guam is actually a little bit I would say a little bit behind the States as far as digital and social media and stuff like that. So it’s, you know, we have to be careful not to go too much further than our community can go as far as doing that. So I would say that the advice is to jump in, don’t spend a whole lot of money upfront, jump in, and test it a little bit. Tell your community, I mean, tell the people that you’re marketing to that, hey, we’re just trying this out. We want to see, you know, we’re trying to do something for you guys. And they totally understand, like our first bingo game. It was a challenge in a lot of different ways that we had a lot of little technical difficulties and you know, we would laugh and we’d say, hey, we’re having a technical difficulty right now and I’m working out the kinks and we’re having another bingo game tomorrow night. And you know, we have a lot of people signed up for that one and yeah, you know, maybe we lost a couple of people from the first one to the second one because of our technical difficulties or because it was too hard for them. But if you start out small and you know, don’t spend a whole ton of money, just test it out and then let your community know that you’re testing it.
Heather:
Those are some great tips. We really appreciate sharing your insights cause I know a lot of people that we speak with are hesitant to try a new technology but you’re evidence that it can really work.
Sharon:
Yeah. Yeah. Everybody around here is really excited about what we’ve been able to do. So, and we’re going to take it, you know, take it when, when we, when we’re done with this whole pandemic challenge, we’re going to take all of the stuff that we’ve learned and I think it’s made us better at marketing. I think it’s made our marketing definitely better.
Heather:
That’s terrific. Megan, did you have one last question to ask?
Megan:
Yeah. So I have one more question. Thanks again for all of that great insight. This one thing to wrap everything up here. What’s the most important thing you have learned while serving in this industry? So whether or not, like you said just within the past couple of months having to adapt to serving because of the pandemic or just your time in general. What’s the one thing you’ve learned serving your community members?
Sharon:
Well, I think outside of all of the new digital online virtual setting, I think really what we are learning is how to help people grieve. I think that’s a huge thing that gets sort of lost in the funeral industry is helping people grieve. And, and more so now because especially since, you know, you guys just put out the Grieving at a Distance thing and I think that’s been around for a while, but right now, you know, really trying to find ways to help people grieve at a distance will I think make us better at helping people grieve, period. Really understanding how people grieve and they have to go through and how important having an actual burial service or, you know, cremation service or things like that. I lost my stepmom during this whole thing and you know, she was part of my life for 50 years and she lived in Michigan and I couldn’t go see her. So for me personally, grieving at a distance was wow. Yeah. I mean it’s super timely that, that, that you guys put that out and it just really helped me understand what I was going through. But also, you know, helping our community who are not able to attend funerals and to find ways for them to you know, access the burial, those services, the things like that so that they can really move into that grieving process cause it’s so important.
Heather:
I really appreciate you sharing that tip sharing because I know, I know a number of people who have been in that same situation of losing someone during the pandemic and not being able to grieve like they normally would. So I think that’s a huge insight into just how important the grieving process is for all of us as human beings. So we really appreciate you joining us, Sharon. And I know you were in there, I know you’ve had your marketing person in there too, even though we didn’t talk. Are you Kersha?
Kersha:
Hello.
Heather:
Hi. Thanks for joining us too. I just want to acknowledge that you were on here. We’ll be posting. Yeah. Do you have anything you wanted to add?
Kersha:
I mean I just started in the last two weeks with Sharon and my company in general. But I think the, regardless of what issues are in Guam and what we’ve been doing here digitally with the events going have been a game-changer. At the same time, it’s not what we want. It’s something that is to challenge us to change things up. I mean, everyone has said we’re a big community on the Island, and everyone is looking get something different, so it’s been a fun challenge, but I’ve enjoyed it.
Heather:
That’s terrific. Well, we really appreciate both of your time and we’ll be posting this video on our blog and on our YouTube channel for the audio for it and you, and you’ll be able to access it on our Facebook feed. For people who are watching in the future, if you have topics you’d like to discuss, just comment in the comments below the recording. We will try to get those topics addressed for you. So feel free to check in with us Facebook messages on Facebook, visit our website, or you can email us at info@funeralinnovations.com. I really appreciate your time.
Sharon:
All right. Thank you so much for having us.
