Cyber funerals are no laughing matter
Especially if the regulator gets its way
Posted in Business, 5th June 2000 10:10 GMT
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You can push black humour too far (well, you can with the authorities). Burymeright.com has been given the cold shoulder over its proposed advertising blitz. The company which offers you the chance to tell family and friends how you want to go, sent a script of a proposed ad to the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre for clearance. The BACC said the ad "was unlikely to get passed".
The FT picked up on it and wrote a funny. We decided to look further.
Uisdean Maclean, director of the BACC, told us that it hadn't banned the ads (yet) as the FT reported, but was at this moment looking at the footage reel (which may or may not be for a cinema ad).
Unfortunately, that was all Uisdean was willing to tell us -no description, deadline, likely decision, feeling, anything (and after we'd apologised for giving him the wrong phone number to call us back on when we hadn't). That is the all-too-familiar world of establishment protocol.
Burymeright's site has nothing but an 'under construction' page.
However, the ads apparently take extreme forms of what people wish for their funerals. So you have a porn star buried in an open coffin and a gameshow host going along a conveyor belt with a cuddly toy. We think this is funny, but then we're sick.
One question though. Where de money gonna come from? We used to like daft Websites but it just gets tiring when funny ideas end up being giving millions of pounds for national advertising. ®

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