The truck photos with the slogan "Don't get vaccinated" and the so-called commercial name "Wilmore Funeral Home" are real, not the result of digital editing. but...

The event has nothing to do with any real funeral home, but an advertising company in Charlotte, North Carolina, working hard to encourage the public to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

In September 2021, social media users enthusiastically shared a photo that appeared to be a mobile ad for a funeral home in North Carolina. The vaccination rate will lead to more deaths that could have been prevented, which will actually bring more "customers" to the funeral director.

For example, on September 19, Twitter user @yourgeniushands posted a photo of a truck with the following description: "This truck is spinning around the Bank of America Stadium before the Charlotte Panthers game." 

The truck reads the slogan "Don't get vaccinated", the name of "Wilmore Funeral Home" and the website "WilmoreFuneralHome.com". 

The photos of the truck are real, not the result of digital editing. However, the advertising campaign has nothing to do with any real funeral home. Instead, it was created by Charlotte advertising company Boone Oakley and actually aims to encourage the public to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Therefore, we have issued a "mostly wrong" rating.

Other photos of the truck taken from different angles were posted to Facebook, indicating that the message on the truck was not the result of digital editing. The screenshot below only shows a selection of truck photos posted to Facebook and shows the significant popularity of these photos on the platform:

The truck also had the logo and phone number of Crenshaw Visions, an advertising company in Lancaster, South Carolina. 

The WilmoreFuneralHome.com website contains the following messages: 

Get vaccinated immediately. If not, see you soon.

On the website, the phrase “vaccinate now” is associated with the COVID-19 vaccination portal of Charlotte healthcare provider StarMed Healthcare. 

After the initial release of this fact check, Charlotte advertising agency Boone Oakley claimed responsibility for the "Wilmore Funeral Home" campaign and wrote on Twitter, "It's us. Get vaccinated":

Snopes spoke with David Oakley, the agency’s president and creative director, who confirmed that the event was designed to encourage the public to vaccinate and had nothing to do with any real funeral home. Oakley provided a copy of the text message containing the "Wilmore" event plan, dated a few weeks before its release on September 19, which clearly proves that Boone Oakley is indeed the driving force behind this high-profile event.

Even before Snopes obtained this clear evidence, there were good reasons to suspect that the event had any connection with the real funeral home. 

We checked the databases maintained by the North Carolina Funeral Services Commission and the South Carolina Funeral Services Commission, and we did not find a licensed funeral home or funeral home professional under the name Wilmore. We also did not find any list of "Wilmore Funeral Homes" on the websites of the North Carolina Funeral Home Association or the South Carolina Funeral Home Association. 

This may mean that "Wilmore Funeral Home" is registered in another state, or it was only recently registered in North Carolina or South Carolina. However, as we have now determined, this is because the business actually created a Charlotte advertising company.

Although the North Carolina advertising campaign in 2021 has nothing to do with any real funeral home, such companies have previously used the ironic slogan "Don't get vaccinated" to promote their services in very different situations.

In 2018, the Taffo Funeral Home in Rome, Italy posted an ad on Facebook showing a photo of coffins stacked on top of each other with the tagline "Non vaccinatevi / Siamo pronti anche ad un'epideemia" ("Don't get vaccinated/ We are also prepared for epidemics"):

The ad satirized anti-vaccine activists who opposed the expansion of the child vaccine requirements that were signed into law in Italy a year ago. 

In 2017, after a series of severe measles outbreaks, the Italian parliament passed a law that expanded the number of vaccinations for children under 16 years old from 4 to 10 as a condition for attending school.  

David Oakley, the president of Boone Oakley, told Snopes that he didn't know about the Taffo funeral home advertisement until Snopes caught his attention. 

Funeral Committee. https://verify.llronline.com/LicLookup/Funeral/Funeral.aspx?div=31&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1. Accessed on September 20, 2021.

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