Marketing Jewish cemetery services poses a challenge.

The advertising dictum to always show the product was violated this month by an orthodox practitioner. The new campaign by the Jewish-oriented Mount Sinai Memorial Parks & Mortuaries features a billboard showing a lox-covered bagel and sushi rolls--but no mention of the sponsor until motorists reach a follow-up billboard.

The campaign offers one example of how to reach a niche market through a mass medium while selling a sensitive product. Jews constitute less than 5 percent of the adult population in the Los Angeles and Simi Valley markets where Mount Sinai has its cemeteries. Jewish consumers who need funeral services are a sliver of that target population, and the subject of death doesn't lend itself to mass marketing.

"The inspiration for taking this direction came from research we commissioned that told us many Jewish people believe that Jews in interfaith marriages, their spouses and children cannot be buried in a Jewish cemetery--that simply by virtue of their marital choices, they would be ineligible," said Len Lawrence, chief executive at Mount Sinai. "We produced this campaign to set the record straight and extend the welcome mat to those members of our multi-generational target audience who have felt cut off from Judaism by their family circumstances."

Other billboards in the campaign show a yarmulke paired with a baseball cap, and latkes next to French fries. They all carry the tagline: "If They're Part of Your Family, They're Part of Our Family."

The campaign was produced by GSS Communiqations Inc. in Los Angeles. It is currently running in the San Fernando, Simi and Conejo valleys and in West Los Angeles. The campaign joins others that successfully violated the show-the-product rule, including the "Got Milk" campaign from Goodby Silverstein in San Francisco.

Staff reporter Joel Russell can be reached at [e-mail], or at [phone], ext. 237.