Robert Mills
Welcome to the Fourth Wall Content Podcast. I'm your host, Robert Mills.
Actors address the audience directly by breaking the fourth wall in theatre and film. This podcast explores the fourth wall in a different sense.
We’ll share techniques, strategies, and tactics to forge meaningful connections with audiences, users, and stakeholders.
Our conversations with experienced and innovative content, UX and research practitioners will uncover the details of real projects with lessons learned along the way and outcomes of the work too.
Each episode will provide you with practical insights and actionable takeaways to help you meet user needs, connect with customers in a genuine way, or engage stakeholders meaningfully. Let’s get to it.
Hello there. I am so pleased you're listening because I have an incredible guest with me today. I am delighted to introduce Helen Lawson. Helen is a specialist in writing about death, dying and bereavement. She's published a book on bereavement for children, written a suite of sympathy cards and almost became a funeral director. director. She is now lead content designer for Co-op Funeral Care. Helen, thank you so very much for making time to chat to me today.
Helen Lawson
Thank you’re very welcome. It's nice to be here, thanks.
Robert Mills
It's a real pleasure and I start all the episodes by asking the same question, which is who is the audience or the user that is going to be the focus of our conversation and the work that we talk about today?
Helen Lawson
The users that I mainly write for and care about and think about is people that are going through grief but more specifically people who are grieving but have a task to do and that task is they have to arrange a funeral.
Robert Mills
Thank you. Hearing you say that, it reminds me of my days as an audience researcher for BBC Wales where audiences were often referred to in quite broad strokes but within those strokes were clusters and segments and smaller audiences. With grief, I suppose everyone's experience of it is going to be different and very changeable and often long term. So there are lots of emotions. There's upset, anger, loneliness, maybe even reassurance or relief, depending on certain beliefs and circumstances.
How do you move from that broader perspective of people who are going through and experiencing grief to something more precise, as in right they've got that task to do of arranging a funeral, when designing content for those audiences?
Helen Lawson
I think the most important thing is that you have to be clear. You have to explain the tasks that they have to do, and without calling them tasks of course, but you have to help them through by being as honest and upfront and as transparent and as clear as possible so that they know what they need to do. I also think it's important to reassure them that we are here to help you arrange the funeral.
It can be similar in size to arranging a wedding. If you've got a hundred guests or more and you're going to feed them all afterwards and you've got to find somewhere to go, you need something to wear, you've got to make choices about flowers, it's not dissimilar in some ways, but of course you're grieving, you don't feel great and it's done within four weeks instead of the two years that it might take to plan a wedding. So I think the most important thing is that whenever we write content about funerals and what people need to do is that we explain it as carefully as we can so there can be no misunderstandings and just try to help people through it.
Robert Mills
Heavily linked to that is obviously, well, there's tone, there's voice and there's language. One thing that I've read about, and I think you may have even mentioned this in your own kind of previous talks and things, is the euphemisms and whether to use them or not, and why, and risks and considerations and so on. And lots of people do use euphemisms when they talk about death, I think sometimes to try and not offend or upset, and people also maybe don't always know how to talk about death comfortably. And so the advice to not use euphemisms perhaps might be something that people are uncomfortable with or maybe it's hard for them to have confidence in writing without using euphemisms. I mean clearly you're an expert in this. What is your advice or the reason for avoiding them that might help someone think, write and talk in a more direct way about death?
Helen Lawson
Well I do have a strong view on them. I do. And that is that there is no place for them within the Funeralcare website. Or when anybody who is writing or guiding people through death, dying and bereavement, whether that's charities, if you look at charities like Cruse, the national bereavement charity, Sands is the stillbirth and neonatal death charity. They all talk about the death of a baby or when the death of somebody close or when somebody has died. And that's because when you need to understand what to do, you have to use the right and most honest words. And I do implore people when you're writing about it, use the right words.
I work with lots of funeral directors day in, day out. And funeral directors have empathy, as in their DNA should be. That's the biggest sort of quality that they have in their job. When you have empathy, you naturally listen to people. You do active listening. So if you're sitting in front of somebody and they say to you, "Oh no, my mum has just passed away." I think it's perfectly reasonable and kind for you as an individual to mirror that language because that shows active listening and you're saying it back to them.
So I don't have a problem with people in their day-to-day language if they feel comfortable saying passed away or passed. I personally don't like to use those terms, but my sort of stance on this is to not use it in the written word when you are trying to help people do something. If it's a government website, if it's a bank where you have to find a death certificate, if it's a charity supporting somebody through or a funeral director helping somebody arrange a funeral, just use the right words because then there can be no misunderstanding.
Sometimes, some euphemisms can be misunderstood. I mean, particularly by children. And I do realise that we don't use, children wouldn't be reading the Funeralcare website. They don't need to organise one, I would hope. But there are examples of a young girl whose sister was at school. a few weeks before their mum had died and they were told that mum had passed away and then her sister fainted at school and they got a call to say your sister's passed out and all that girl heard was the word passed and for a split second she thought her sister had died and that's because the right terminology wasn't used and she associated the word passed with somebody dying. Similarly there was a mum and daughter and grandma that all lived in the same house and grandma died. The mum explained to her four-year-old daughter that grandma's gone and used the word gone and the little girl accepted this and skipped away, went to go and play and then when she came back she was like well where's grandma when is she coming back, because what does gone mean? Has she gone to the shop and has she gone to the doctors? Where has she gone? Gone doesn't feel final enough and I think if you use honest and kind words with children they will understand what you mean.
I know people use euphemisms to sound a little softer, I just don't think it does soften the blow. I think when somebody dies it's rubbish, it's absolutely rubbish and grief is rubbish and it's difficult and it's hard. But if you were comforting somebody who had gone through a bereavement and you were going to see a friend or a relative and if you felt more comfortable using euphemisms then go for it. Use what feels comfortable. I am more concerned that you're talking to people about it and that you're trying to give comfort to people. That's more important than whether or not you say dead or died or passed away to me in a human interaction. But when you have to write principles for a very large website like the Funeralcare website then you need to have a way of saying things that can be clear and never misunderstood. So that's why we only use death, dying, died when we're writing for funeral care.
Robert Mills
Such incredible insight into that and reasoning for it. If ever there's a circumstance or no place for ambiguity, I think it's in some of those examples you've just outlined there.
Helen Lawson
Yeah, I think it's about not having any ambiguity. In in a relationship in somebody's, sorry, in a conversation in somebody's kitchen, over a cup of tea with some biscuits, just after somebody's had bad news, you, the most important thing to me is that you're in that kitchen, that you're having that conversation, that you don't shy away from people. I always start my talks whenever I give a talk on, on this topic with a little anecdote that happened because of course one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about about getting this right is because I had to arrange a funeral myself when I was 25, my brother who was 33, died in a motorbike accident. And my mum just obviously wasn't capable, she wasn't in the right frame of mind to arrange it. So I took on a lot of the arrangements. And she didn't leave the house for a while. She lived in a small town that we've lived in all our lives. And one day she did, she had to go to the shop and she was walking to the shop, somebody that she'd known all of her life walked towards her. Mum sort of steeled herself like you might do. You sort of get ready, this person's going to ask me how I am, I'm going to have to talk to them. And rather than talk to my mum, she ran across the road. And my mum then felt that she was the problem. She couldn't be seen because she was upsetting other people. And it was that moment as well that made me think, oh, I'm never going to cross that road. I am going to talk to people, I'm going to walk up to them, because it's not about me. And if I make them cry, or if something I say makes them cry, it isn't me making them cry. It's the situation. What's more important is that you go and you talk to somebody, that you don't cross the road and that you show comfort to another human being who is in a difficult place.
Robert Mills
It's just such an odd circumstance where people, their intentions are so well-meaning and they're trying not to upset somebody but actually through those actions of crossing the road, as you say your mum felt like she was a problem and it did kind of upset her so it's very complicated when you know someone's trying to to do the best thing, but actually it's maybe not the best thing. And that's why I'm just so grateful that, you know, yourself and I know others, but you really are out there kind of talking about these things and sharing these examples. It's really incredible that you turn in your own experiences into kind of knowledge and, you know, and advice and just conversation that I have no doubt will help so many other people, whichever side of the grief they're on, whether they're speaking to someone experiencing it or they're experiencing it themselves. I've almost said the end of the episode by saying how grateful I am, but I think it's absolutely right I would say how grateful I am that you're sharing this.
You also mentioned just a couple of minutes ago about the principles as well. So I know that it's been a conscious piece of work at Co-op Funeralcare to develop those principles. And it says that the Funeralcare website is the online voice of our funeral directors and the four principles are down to earth, empathetic, reassuring and inspiring. What was the process for defining those principles?
Helen Lawson
You know, I was so excited to be asked to help do this. I really was because this just felt like, it feels like a vocation for me. I absolutely love what I'm able to do, I'm very privileged to be able to do what I do, I think. And writing these principles, it's one of the easiest things I've ever had to write, I'll be honest, because I think the first one is empathetic.
On my list, we start with empathy because empathy shows that you understand, not that you will have sympathy. We don't need our funeral directors necessarily to sympathise with people. We need them to empathise because that means that they understand what they're going through and they can talk to them in a way that people can understand. And so that was the first one that felt like absolutely off the bat. That is one of our principles. We have to empathise with people that are using our services.
The second one was reassuring. And this is because people could be extremely daunted by arranging a funeral. The average person will arrange one or two funerals in their lives if they're lucky, and that will be their parents. That's kind of the natural order. It doesn't always go that way, obviously, but we don't do this every day. people don't arrange funerals very often at all. So you need to reassure people that actually we will do the hard bit as Funeralcare. Obviously this is still also a commercial entity, but we want people to know that they can leave this part to us. We will help them do the arrangements. I always think that grief is the hard bit. Arranging the funeral doesn't have to be. That's what we're gonna help you do. And if you ever break your leg, if you've ever done a sort of first aid training, or if you've ever been in a situation where you needed a paramedic, you will know that the first thing that you're supposed to do is reassure someone. You're gonna be okay, we've got you, we're here, you're going to be okay. And I feel like that's the first thing also that we need to do with people when they come through the door or when they come to the website, is reassure them, we're gonna help you with this.
And then down to earth. It's another way of saying, I suppose, plain English. It's another way of saying just being clear, using down-to-earth language that people can understand. There are some words within the funeral business that are difficult to understand, like embalming. We're often asked to explain embalming, and we try and find a way to do it, which is something that we're constantly iterating upon. But if people leave your website to find out what that means, then I always feel like you failed them a little bit. You should explain yourself as you go and use as much transparent language as you can.
Then the last one is inspiring. We want to inspire people because a good funeral can lead people onto better grief because you have that memory of that day where people were there, you were enveloped in love. Perhaps it was very, very personal. Perhaps it just felt amazing that everybody sang their favourite song or wore their favourite colour or whatever they did. You can inspire people to hold very creative, personal, imaginative, celebratory funerals. Now, also people talk about, oh, funerals are a celebration of life now, aren't they? And I think sometimes that's a little glib myself because they can be a celebration of that person's life but they can still be incredibly sad but adding little personal touches to that.
So I mean, I have lots and lots of examples of wonderful personal touches that funeral directors and funeral arrangers have put into things at Funeralcare but also personally as well, one of my favourite moments. And it might sound odd, but I had several favourite moments from my brother's funeral, it was amazing, was as we were leaving to go to the crematorium from the church, some of his friends had gathered at a certain spot where they knew the cars would have to stop, like at some traffic lights. And they all stood there and they all had whiskey glasses with Jack Daniels in. And as we drove off, they splashed the car with Jack Daniels, 'cause that was his favourite drink. I still get goosebumps when I tell that story, I really, really do. And I didn't ask them to do that, nobody did. I didn't know they were going to do that, but that little personal touch is one of my favourite moments from that day.
Our funeral directors know these sorts of little tricks and tips and things that people can add in. It could be as simple as if you've had a dog, if somebody died and they loved their dog, well, when their person leads the funeral procession, the funeral arranger there, they can have the dog with them. The dog can go to the funeral, little things like that. or as big as, one funeral director had to arrange a funeral for a small boy, very difficult. This boy loved train sets, you know, Hornby style train sets. And that funeral director, the night before the funeral, went into his own loft and found his old Hornby train set. And on the day of the funeral, he put the track around where the coffin was going to sit and throughout the funeral, a train was just running around the track. Now that was a beautiful little moment. In the family, it just helps take a little bit of the heat away from the day. When you've got something you can talk about afterwards, wouldn't he have loved that? Wasn't that wonderful? Didn't we do well? And those moments, I think, lead you on to better grief. So that's why it's important to inspire people about what's possible and what they can do.
Robert Mills
I mean, every example you have, it truly is inspiring. I had goosebumps as well when you talking then. The principles are such a great example of those principles in action. Now sometimes you have a style guide and they say, we write in this way, but it's written in the totally opposite way. You can tell that those principles have applied their own kind of advice. And I really love the, we say we don't say components when you've got examples. So you know, you're showing as well as telling, which I think is also very powerful. And for example, the empathetic principle, you know, you're saying, we don't say we've been arranging funerals for more than 100 years, we do say the first thing we do is listen to you, then advise, guide and inspire you to create the perfect funeral arrangement. There's two very different perspectives with very different, I think expectations and kind of emotional like management as well and it just goes to show the care and consideration has gone into those principles. They’re quite something.
Helen Lawson
Thank you and I think they're quite actionable you know they're not so... principles sometimes I've been a copywriter before I was a content designer and copywriters sometimes we like to flex a little bit we like to be a bit creative and fun and principles is one of the places where you can do that you know I've seen principles where it says things like we write with a swagger. Well, what does that mean you write with a swagger? It's not actionable. But if you can say we write with empathy, we write with reassurance, you know, we are reassuring, they're actionable. So people that come into Funeralcare, I mean, I've been there now for eight years, and I, to be honest, I can't see myself leaving this business. I'll be here till the end. And every time somebody new joins the team, as an engineer, as a delivery manager, as a content person, as a user researcher, anybody, when they join this team, they get what we call the talk, which is half an hour with me to understand what funerals are, how important it is, how much we care and how we don't get things wrong and how we put the client first. And we always do that with everybody. There is even a recorded version of the talk, which is much easier because people do come and go. And I think it's really important to connect everybody on the team to what it is that we do, because we're not selling milk, other parts of Co-op do that very very well, we are arranging funerals and it's to me it's just that bit more important and I want everybody on the team to care and they do.
Robert Mills
What you said leads nicely onto something else I was keen to ask around the principles because it's one thing to have you know these actually very good, very considered, brilliantly articulated principles, but it's another thing for others to understand them and to use them, and therefore the output, i.e. the content, is reflective of those principles. So aside from the talk, which I'm very intrigued about now, is there anything else that you do as part of onboarding or anything else that actually ensures that those principles really are embedded within your kind of content practices and processes?
Helen Lawson
Well yes, I think there are. I mean there are only sort of, I was the lead, I'm the lead content designer on Co-op Funeralcare. We've just had a junior start a few weeks ago and we also have somebody from marketing who works with us quite closely as well as a content person. So anybody who writes content, we all, we work together, you know, you've got to have thick, thick skin when you write content, whoever you are and however long you've been doing it, because everybody needs an editor. So we work together closely as a team to get the content in the right place.
But I really believe that anyone who joins the team needs to care about funerals. We do this in a number of ways. So the talk isn't telling off. It's a conversation with me where I actually take them through what it feels like to be a funeral director for a day. And I sort of have a presentation that shows them what the back of the house looks like and what people do and explain that, you know, phones are ringing, people are coming to get, to deliver flowers and somebody might come to get paid for cleaning the windows. And we have to sort of understand what a funeral director's day is like.
We also do site visits. We went just last week with, I think there's about 14 of us, we went to a large funeral home in Salford. We had a look at the mortuary, we had a look at the crematorium, we went to a funeral home and everybody was free to ask lots of questions. We saw that where the coffins are kept and where the cars are kept clean and they had a full tour of a whole day to understand what it's like to work in a funeral home. And there's always some reassurances that need to be made to people when we go to something like that. And that is that we're not going to see dead people. We don't take them in. When they go to the mortuary, the mortuary is always closed down. There are no people out because, for a number of reasons. One, I don't think it makes you a better website developer or back end engineer if you've seen a person who's in a coffin and secondly that person belongs to somebody and they're not ours so we don't need to see them, that's private that's somebody else's person. But I do think it is important that they go around this and they see the care that is put into it.
A lot of funeral directors and certainly every single one of ours before a funeral leaves the front door everyone's dressed in their fine gear, the cars are really clean, the coffin is in the back of the, well it's not quite in the back of the hearse at this point, but the flowers are there, everything's ready to go, and they have a moment that they call a pause for thought. And that's when the whole team that's on that funeral, the drivers, the pall bearers, the funeral director themselves, they all take a moment because imagine how busy it is beforehand, you've got to make sure you've got the orders of service, are the flowers correct, is that, is the car clean, has the coffin been polished, It's busy. And before they leave, everyone takes a moment, just goes, right, quiet. And they stand around the coffin. And the final checks are done, all very important, identification, all very important. The name on the front of the coffin has to match the name on the wristband. And there's lots of identifying checks that have to be done. But more than that, at this time, they read out what we call the about me section.
So when we are arranging a funeral with somebody and we do that bit at the beginning that you mentioned where we listen they will tell us about somebody we will write something called the about me which might say something like you know here's Gregory. Gregory was 82 years old he was a massive Man United fan he loved nothing but spending time with his grandchildren and racing pigeons or something like that whatever it might be and everybody takes a moment to remember who Gregory is because this is not a wardrobe, this is not a unit, this is not a product, this is a person. And we all have to remember why we're doing this and what this person's life was like. And that's the final thing that they do. I think that sets everybody in the right frame of mind to then go and be respectful and run the funeral. And so I feel when they go on a site visit, when we take engineers onto a site visit, they learn all of this, you know, they're told all of this and they come out and they're so wide-eyed and like wow it's just amazing. I just think it's absolutely crucial to care about what you're doing when you're doing something as important as this.
Robert Mills
One thing I wasn't expecting in this conversation and it's been shining through is actually we're not just talking about content designers, you're constantly referring to everybody else at Co-op Funeralcare and how you're all working together to you know to be empathetic and to live those principles and it's just really fascinating to hear that the fact that you know the amount of effort and time and dedication to do those site visits you know it's so easily could not happen so the fact that that's prioritised and you know and it's very much it has to happen it's just credit to everybody there and the benefit to the you know to the customer and to the people going through grief on how to use your services is just you know immeasurable I'd imagine?
Helen Lawson
I think if the intention is good and the work rate is there and people care enough and come together and to do these things and you know I do I think it really matters from the top down whatever your role you should care about what we're doing and those site visits you know they're expensive engineers like they rate some of them, even some of the people that came on the site visit were contractors, but we still believe it's important that they come and they have that experience and that they see what goes on behind the scenes without really seeing what goes on behind the scenes because like I said that's not necessary.
Robert Mills
Thank you for sharing that. I'm intrigued because doing anything with users and with an audience can be challenging. I can't imagine doing certain things with audiences and users when they're experiencing grief or they're in the process or about to start the process of arranging a funeral. How do you bring those people into your testing or your research in that kind of empathetic, considerate way, whilst also getting the results and the kind of insights that you also need?
Helen Lawson
You're catching me on a really interesting day because we have just done a full week of user research with people who have had to arrange a funeral for a child.
Robert Mills
Oh wow.
Helen Lawson
I know, it's been a very busy, very important week. Now I'm often I've done talks at different sort of conferences, as you know as well. I've been over to Confab and I've done Camp Digital in Manchester. I do this talk quite often. And often when there's an opportunity to ask questions after, a regular question is, "Should you do research with people that have been through something difficult?" And my answer is always, "Absolutely." To make your services better, you need to speak to the people that are going to use them, then that's the bottom line, whether you're in banking or you're selling electricals. The really crucial thing is to not shy away from it, is to be brave, is to ask. We use a sort of a research company that finds us participants, and you set your parameters and what it is that you're looking for. And we always ask people to have arranged a funeral within the last two years. And for obviously for a child that was something that we had to be really clear about. And we got five participants for this past week.
Previously we did a piece of work on what we call, internally, imminent need. So when somebody is dying and they know they're dying and they want to arrange their own funeral either by themselves or with a family member, how do we talk to them about what's possible then because you can arrange everything, have it all written down and then we will just make it happen after that time. So we spoke to somebody who had a terminal illness themselves and we spoke to somebody whose wife was terminally ill with stage four cancer and we had very, very open conversations with them. And there are some rules I think, the way to make this happen. And the one thing is to just be really upfront and honest about what it is that you'll be talking about. There must be no surprises. You must give people agency, an opportunity to speak about their experiences. If they are saying yes to this research, they've already said yes to speaking about this. And then when they're in the research, absolutely give them every opportunity to stop if they want to, because they don't owe us anything. If this is too difficult, that's really okay.
More often than not, in all the research sessions I've been in, and there's a lot with people that have been through something traumatic or difficult or some sort of grief, not one has had to finish early, not one. We have very often had to give people time to compose themselves to take a breath. Just yesterday, we work with a user researcher called Jamie Kane. He's our lead user researcher and he is exceptional in these sessions with people. It's always on UserZoom so they can't see the other people on the call. It's just between him and them. And the important thing is to really listen, to give them time. And when they need the time, just let them just reassure them. He just honestly stays absolutely quiet until they've composed themselves and they want to carry on.
Different things will trigger different people. We had a research session with a guy and I thought at first, I thought, "Oh, this is easy." He was looking at a very, very straightforward flow, prototype that we'd put together, which was do people want to use an online service to book a funeral appointment arrangement? It was sort of something that we were testing and so it was very straightforward, you know, it was a form, make an appointment, fill it in, all of this stuff and I thought this is going to be fine, this is going all right. And then at one point Jamie asked him, he said, "What advice would you give to somebody who had to arrange a funeral?" and the man couldn't speak. He just completely broke down, just gulping air, sobbing. And then he just broke and burst into tears. And we were all crying on the other side of the screen, you know, behind the glass, or behind the computer screen, because it was really moving. And Jamie gave him all of the time, he came back, he said he wanted to carry on and at the end he said I wanted to finish that because I want to make it easier for the next person who has to arrange a funeral.
So there's sometimes motivation to make things better for other people behind them and sometimes it's also like therapy. One guy who arranged a funeral for, oh sorry, well his wife was dying and she was arranging her own funeral, the research session, I didn't have high hopes for it going very well because this guy was very agitated, anxious, you know, very worried. He was sitting quite close up to the screen. I could see him wringing his hands. And I thought, how are we going to get to the topic? You know, he's asked, he was controlling the conversation. He was asking lots of questions because he didn't, he was too scared to get near to the bit that we were here to talk about. But he did relax. And he didn't just relax verbally. He relaxed physically, he moved to to a different chair and sort of sat back and he was sitting back looking up at the ceiling and we could see him still. He didn't look at the screen but he answered all of the questions. He spoke about how his wife is planning her own funeral. He doesn't want to see it yet. He's not ready to see it but he knows where it is. And at the end of that session he gave such a sigh, such a deep like, 'Oh yeah!' And I honestly believe that that research session gave him an opportunity to speak to somebody he's never going to see again. He got to say things that he might not be able to say to his wife and he got to think about things that he's been too scared to think about but probably did him some good.
So I think research can work just as much for the person who's your participant as it does for us. We learn so much from what they say and from what they don't say when we observe but I do believe that when research is done well and with real empathy and real care, it can be a very cathartic experience for somebody who is taking part.
Robert Mills
It links back, I think, to the beginning of our conversation when we were talking about your mum and the lady crossing the road. It would be easy to assume that people wouldn't want to take part in the research because it would be too painful, it would be too hard. But actually, as you've just outlined there, there are people out there who are just so desperate to be asked, "How are you? How was your experience?" and that motivation to make you better for others. It's so empowering. But you know, they actually do just want to talk about it.
Helen Lawson
And they've agreed to it. They have signed up to take part in this research, knowing exactly what the research is going to be about. We do have some dropouts perhaps, or say that they can't make it. And that's absolutely fine, of course.
We had a dad join us, which was, you know, we learned so much from this one guy, he was such a nice man. And he talked about how he felt he was overlooked when his wife lost a baby. And he was overwhelmed by some of the care that we put into some of our content. But the thing that stood out to him most, and we discussed this as a team, we signpost people to various charities and support pages, but on one of them we thought we need to look after dads, let's put something on there. And all we did was find a charity that's based in Wigan called Daddys With Angels, and we put a link to it with a description about what that charity is about. And he's stuck on that. He was really like, I didn't know that was there, I wish I'd known about that. I wish I'd heard about that before, that's amazing. He might now go away and contact that charity and be able to have a better conversation about what he went through because I do think that his grief was overlooked because everybody was worried about his wife who was physically and well as well as had lost a baby. I think it can be quite useful for some folk.
Robert Mills
I mean when you're talking through just the work that yourself and the team do and everything you have to kind of consider and the things that you hear and you're kind of you're exposed to. I imagine that it's well, you know, you already said we were all crying it's emotional, it's hard, it must be draining. here's so much hope and optimism in what you're sharing in terms of the impact there's having and the positive change that is making. Would you say it's like rewarding and it's kind of, you know, you must be inspired by some of the experiences as well?
Helen Lawson
Hugely, of course. And yeah, absolutely. I can't believe my look being in the role that I have, because I get so much from it. Being able to just try and make things a little bit better, but not just from the work that we do in terms of the words on a screen, but in talking to you and sharing this podcast and going to different talks.
When I do a talk at the end, I tend to have a bit with it. I was worried that it's a little bit cheesy, but I don't think it is. But it's my Jerry Springer moment where I tell people at the end of a talk to, you know, please look in, check in on somebody if you know someone that's grieving. Even if somebody, you know, if somebody's dad died a couple of years ago, just check in with them, talk to them, say his name, ask about them, have a conversation. So I try and spread that in my talks that I do because I know, I know how good it can feel and I think you need to trust other people if they don't want to talk about it, they will let you know. But I am very lucky we have a really strong team and we all care and we are in this, you know, we have this opportunity to do research like this and come away feeling fulfilled. It is draining though, I'll definitely tell you that, you know, recording this podcast, I've been excited to talk to you, Rob, and I'm really, really enjoying this, but we have had such a heavy week of children's funerals research. But yeah, I talk about it all the time, and I'm a little bit evangelical about it.
Robert Mills
I was at a funeral last week, and what you were saying just reminded me, the person leading that funeral said that someone only truly dies when people stop talking about them and they stop saying their name. It sounds so simple but I think it's so powerful and really, you know, it's such a great reminder that we should still be talking and sharing.
Helen Lawson
Yeah, yeah. And it can feel really lovely when people talk about somebody and just say their name, it can feel so even years later, you know, I must admit though, on the day of my brother's funeral, I did hear some stories about him that I wish I hadn't heard. They told me about a boy’s trip to Amsterdam and like, Oh, can we rewind? But it's still a nice opportunity because other people knew, you know, we all know people differently, don't we? People knew my brother differently to me. I was his little sister, I was really annoying. But his mates, you know, we're friends with him. And they have great stories that they could share with them. So if I do, I just think it's crucial that we look out for each other like that. And it's such a simple thing to do. It's such a simple thing to do, really, if you just sort of think, right, I'm going to just ask and see how they are. And if somebody cries, then that's okay. Give them a hug.
Robert Mills
Yeah, yeah, absolutely right. We are fast coming to the end of the time that we've got today. I just wanted to quickly talk about the work that you have been doing recently, because you mentioned you had this week of research and it's around, you know, arranging funerals for children. Is there anything you can talk about with the kind of, you know, that research is going to feed into and what you're kind of working on related to that?
Helen Lawson
Yeah, we are rewriting the children's funeral page on the Funeralcare website. I mean, we look at, you know, pages get iterated upon all the time, every few years. And I know that in the propositions team, they have come up with some new products and ideas and things, and we just need to find a way to talk about them. And it's a great opportunity to look at that page and how we can make it better and stronger.
It's tricky as a team, at the end of the day when we've had a really fulfilling day we'll say things like, "Is it wrong to say that I enjoyed that?" And it does feel sometimes a little bit wrong to say that we enjoyed this work, but the work feels so sort of important and special and you're talking to people that are really amazing and it's quite uplifting to listen to people's stories and you know that you're going to do something important with it. I've really enjoyed it. I've really enjoyed working on this.
And two, to help us, Jamie Kane who I mentioned before, our user researcher, he recommended that we all read the Rob Delaney book and Rob Delaney from Catastrophe, an American actor whose child Henry had a, I think he had brain cancer and he died. And Rob has written a brilliantly honest, searingly honest book where he swears a lot and he's angry and I don't blame him. And it was such a window into his world and what he had been through. The whole team bought the book and read the book. You know, we all read it because we thought we need to understand this a little bit and get, you know, he's like touch the fire, touch the hot fire, feel, you know, what, how it feels for other people. It's painful, but you have to sort of go there a little bit.
So that was, that was a really interesting project. And we've got another couple of weeks on this now, we've learned a lot from people. There was some gaps, you always learn gaps, that's why you have to do research. There are bits on there that we've missed out, and how have we missed out that? And we need to explain things more clearly like cost, because one thing that people don't know, because why would you need to know? But mostly children's funerals are free. So with the Co-op you don't pay for our services. We give certain parts of our services completely free so our personnel, the call bearers, the funeral director, the hearse, the limousine, a coffin, it is all free and the cremation is free, the burial is free. Lots of things are free and we need to explain that to people and let them know.
But what you often find is for children's funerals people want to go further and do more. So rather than a hearse that might want a horse from carriage, rather than the coffin that we would provide for free, they want a more elaborate picture coffin with photographs of everybody on. And you know what was interesting? To write this page we did a workshop with our funeral arrangers. So the people that arranged these funerals day in day out. Co-op is national and there are some people in nearly every region there is always one person who is more experienced at doing children's funerals than others because they're just more experienced at it. So we got them all on a call and did a workshop and they told us so many stories and they gave me so many lines, so like quotes that are now in the content such as one mum said to me she wanted this funeral to be every event her girl was going to miss. This funeral is going to be every birthday party, every wedding, every prom, every everything that she could have gone to. So she really wanted to go to town on this funeral. And she also talked about how a dad wanted to carry his baby girl in the coffin and walk down the aisle because that'd be his only chance to take her down the aisle. I'm even welling up, I've been reading about this for weeks.
We learned all of these stories from the funeral arrangers and we've put them into the content. Because that is the reality. And what's interesting is in this content there are all these suggestions you can walk them down the aisle, you can carry the coffin, you can you know have the big princess funeral, this will be every event they would have missed. That's in the content and when we've done research with people that have had to arrange a funeral for a child they've read that and they've gone oh that's beautiful, oh that's amazing, oh that's really inspiring and one dad was like oh I wish I'd done that and he felt quite sad that he hadn't done the thing which was a bit difficult for him I know but then when somebody another colleague of mine, who has a five-year-old son, he sort of over my shoulder was reading the content, and he had a reaction to it. He was like, "Ooh, ouch. Well, that's difficult to read. It is difficult to read for you, but you're not my audience. The audience is somebody who has to arrange this funeral, so we're trying to look after them and inspire them. So the fact that it's difficult for you to read sort of doesn't matter. This is for people that have to arrange your funeral and we're trying to help them. And that was a really interesting moment when we were writing that content. I was concerned I might have gone too far. And that's why you do user research as well. I am testing this content. Is it too much to put that in there about the dad walking his daughter down the aisle? You know, is that too much? And we're going too close. And so far, all the participants thought it was lovely. So hopefully that will stay in. But it's been such an interesting project and I don't know how long your podcast is Rob but I could talk about this for days and days but I realise that we haven't got forever.
Robert Mills
I could listen to you talk about it for days and days. Using actual quotes within your content. It's just, it really is so very interesting to hear how you're managing those kinds of sessions and the outcomes of those sessions and how it's not only informing the content, it's becoming the content as well.
So to bring us to a close, let's keep thinking about audiences, but from a slightly different perspective. Can you think of a time recently where you've been the audience or you've been the user and what have you watched or what have you read or what have you listened to that might have provoked a reaction or stirred in emotion and that can be work-related or otherwise.
Helen Lawson
I do think that reading the Rob Delaney book was very powerful and useful. I do from time to time read books written by funeral arrangers and directors to stay close to it but I have not had to arrange a funeral myself for some time now, which is obviously a very good thing.
Robert Mills
Helen, thank you so much for spending time with me today. You really are an inspiration and the work that you do and the team and everybody at Co-op Funeralcare, you know, the work that you do, the knowledge you share, I truly believe is making the world kinder, more considerate and truly empathetic. So it's been a real pleasure chatting to you.
Helen Lawson
Thank you very much. And you.
Robert Mills
Thank you for listening to the Fourth Wall Content podcast. All episodes, transcripts and show notes can be found ay fourthwallcontent.com. Good luck with your content challenges and I hope you can join us next time. Bye for now.
