Ask a director how tribute media works at their usual crematorium and you will often get a version of the same answer: the family asks us, we collect the photographs, we pass them on, and the charge appears somewhere else.
The shape of it
Most crematoria have an AV contract. The supplier provides the screens, the webcast and the tribute slideshow, and bills either the crematorium or the family directly. The director sits in the middle doing the part that takes the time — having the conversation, chasing the photographs across a family who are grieving and dispersed, checking the order, fielding the "can we add one more" on the morning.
That work is real and it is unpaid. The margin sits with whoever holds the AV contract, and it is not the funeral director.
Why it matters more than it used to
Because the rest of the invoice is thinner. The CMA's own tracking shows add-on and send-off spend under real-terms pressure, and the average revenue per case is being pulled down by the shift to direct cremation — roughly £1,597 for a direct cremation against £4,285 for a simple attended funeral, a gap of about £2,688 per case.
When the core service is compressed, a line you facilitate but do not bill is not neutral. It is a piece of the arrangement you are effectively giving away.
The alternative is not a fight with the crematorium
It is worth saying plainly, because the obvious reading of this is "take the AV contract back", and for almost every independent that is not realistic or even desirable.
The alternative is to have something of your own that is venue-independent — that plays from a phone, a laptop or a memory stick, that the family keeps afterwards, and that does not depend on which crematorium the service happens to be at. A thing you can offer, price, and bill on your own invoice, without renegotiating anything with anybody.
What to check
If you want to know whether this applies to you, three questions:
- When a family asks for a tribute video, whose invoice does the charge land on?
- Who does the work of collecting and ordering the photographs?
- If the family wants a copy afterwards, who provides it, and at what price?
If the answer to the second is "us" and the answer to the first and third is "somebody else", that is the gap.
Sources: CMA funerals-sector price and cost trends, via Funeral Service Times; independent funeral marketing on digital differentiation. The per-case figures are sector averages, not a quote for any particular home.