Raising Awareness from 3% to 96%

Prior to 1999, the American Family Life Assurance Company of Ohio had 3% awareness. CEO Dan Amos said that not even his friends and family could remember the name. 

It was a serious business. Amos sold supplemental life insurance. When someone hoped for the best but planned for the worst, they called Dan Amos. 

But people didn’t like planning for the worst. People don’t enjoy thinking about insurance and they definitely don’t enjoy thinking about supplemental insurance. It was more like, out of sight, out of mind. 

“What we found is that the insurance category has very low interest to people because it’s high anxiety,” said the advertiser Linda Kaplan Thaler, “People are so anxious about what can happen to them, that they tune out the ad.”

How does a business talk about something no one wants to talk about? 

With a duck. 

Introduced in 1999, the Aflac duck grew awareness to 96% and tripled Amos’s sales within three years. “By having this funny little duck,” Thaler said, “we are saying ‘It’s not going to be so bad, Aflac will take care of you.’” 

Insurance can be cold. It’s terms and conditions. It’s contracts and premiums. It’s the next thing that happens after something bad happens. 

Aflac softened everything. The quacking duck made it okay to think about, which meant it was okay to inquire about. 

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