Before you spring forward this weekend into daylight saving time, a casket company hopes you’ll consider whether it’s time to bury what some consider to be an unhealthy ritual.
In a new ad campaign and promotional push on its website, Titan Casket makes a somewhat satirical pitch to stop with all this clock winding and rewinding and let standard time stand.
“At Titan Casket, we obviously have an interest in you dying,” actor David Dastmalchian (“Dune,” “The Suicide Squad”) says in the ad, before adding, “But, we can wait.”
The company’s new pitchman directs viewers to Titan’s website to learn how to “put our national nuisance six feet under.” That effort includes help in writing Congressional representatives.
Founded in 2016, Titan includes a husband-and-wife team based in Bellevue, Wash. COO Josh Siegel previously spent more than eight years at Amazon and was chief product officer at cosmetic treatment review startup RealSelf. Liz Siegel, who previously ran her own baby products company, is Titan’s chief customer officer. Longtime casket manufacturer and supplier Scott Ginsberg serves as Massachusetts-based CEO.
Titan raised $3.5 million in 2022 for its mission is to make it easy to buy a casket online rather than at a funeral home, saving customers time and money during what can be an emotional process. They even landed a casket in a Taylor Swift video.
The company is among an increasing number of startups innovating to bring change to the $20 billion funeral industry.
The ad campaign was created in collaboration with actor Ryan Reynolds’ agency, Maximum Effort. While it may poke fun at the ritual of time change, there are legitimate concerns linked to the twice-yearly switch and disruptions to our circadian rhythms.
“That one-hour change may not seem like much, but it can wreak havoc on people’s mental and physical well-being in the short term,” said Dr. Charles Czeisler, professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School’s Division of Sleep Medicine, in an article titled “The dark side of daylight saving time.”
Northwestern Medicine reports during the week of switching to daylight savings a 24% higher risk of heart attacks, 6% spike in fatal car accidents, 8% increase in stroke rate, 11% jump in depressive episodes, and more.
