My close friends and colleagues know I love obits. 

I probably bore others talking about them. I tweet them. And I send them as emails to acquaintances I think might be interested in the subject’s life or work. 

My mother may have been responsible for this mild obsession, as she never missed what she called “the death notices” in the Dayton Daily News or Journal Herald. But then again, she used to read the newspaper from the back to the front. At least I don’t do that. Perhaps that’s a subject for another blog post.

Well-written obituaries—such as those I read daily in the New York Times—are like onions. They have layers that can be peeled back to learn just a little, or a lot. Many obits have great lessons for marketers, and that’s what I’ll explore in this post.