Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum (non-profit

Established as a non-profit garden cemetery in 1845, Spring Grove is the second-largest cemetery in the United States. Spring Grove is a Cincinnati tradition that hosts numerous events annually and holds a rich history of both interred residents and architecture. Spring Grove Cemetery is part of the Spring Grove Family, which also includes The Jon Deitloff Funeral Centre, Oak Hill Cemetery and The Spring Grove Heritage Foundation.

Challenge

A large part of Spring Grove’s mission in 2003 and 2004 was to establish itself as a venue for special events. Being a cemetery, Spring Grove was challenged to overcome the solemn image of a cemetery and convince people of the venue’s beauty, historic value and practicality as a place for events.

Solution

OCI was asked to promote the cemetery and its existing events to the Greater Cincinnati community. OCI recommended that Spring Grove target its outreach efforts with special events held outside of the cemetery in the areas it had identified as housing its target demographics for special events. Additionally, OCI distributed Spring Grove news to individual community newspapers, and secured profiles of Spring Grove employees and tour volunteers in targeted neighborhood publications.

Results

Spring Grove leaders continually remarked on the amount of general and community media coverage the cemetery had received since OCI’s involvement. Such coverage included numerous employee profiles, announcements and articles in leading daily and weekly newspapers about special events and the cemetery’s connection to Cincinnati’s baseball and civil war past, and the cemetery and funeral centre as one of three such entities profiled in an episode of Taboo on The National Geographic Channel.