life happens
LIAM 365: Promoting Life Insurance
Awareness, Every Day and All Year Long
ROBERT N. GARNEAU, CLU, ChFC
CHAIR, LIFE HAPPENS
September is Life Insurance Awareness month, but
it’s a marketing campaign you and your producers
can use all year long.
I
t’s that time of year again to
prepare for Life Insurance Aware-
ness Month—the industry’s big-
gest rallying point.
Life Happens created and coordi-
nates this national consumer aware-
ness campaign each September so
that you and the producers you work
with can help consumers get the life
insurance they desperately need.
More than a third of households say
they would feel the financial impact
within a month if the primary wage
earner died, according to the 2018
Insurance Barometer Study by Life
Happens and LIMRA.
As this year’s chair of Life Hap-
pens, I get to see a lot of the behind-
the-scenes work the organization
does, and they’ve been preparing for
this campaign since late last year.
We’re excited to have professional
athlete and entrepreneur Danica Pat-
rick as our celebrity LIAM spokesper-
son again. To understand how great
Danica has been as our spokesperson
for the importance of life insurance,
you need only look at the results of
her life insurance public service an-
nouncement. Over the past two and
a half years, it’s been seen on TV or
heard on the radio more than 1 bil-
lion times (yes, with a “b”).
Three Themes, One Strong
Call to Get Life Insurance
The best part of her participating for
the third year is that you are able to
leverage all three of the themes that
she articulates so well.
The first year, Danica spoke about
risk and that “Not having life in-
surance is a risk you don’t have to
take.” In year two, Danica spoke
about financial fitness, saying: “Fit-
ness extends to all parts of your life,
including your finances. And when it
comes to being financially fit, get-
ting life insurance is key.”
Now for Danica 3.0, we’ve built
on the very successful and well re-
ceived financial fitness theme. This
year, the theme is “A Journey to Fi-
nancial Fitness.” Here’s the essence
of the message: “Step by step. Goal
by goal. Do that next good thing by
putting financial protection in place
with life insurance. Then, no matter
what happens in your financial—or
life—journey, your loved ones will be
OK financially.”
Danica is the perfect person to
talk about this, as she herself is on
a personal and professional journey.
Although she finished her racing ca-
reer this year with the Daytona 500
and the Indy 500, she is now ap-
pearing on every media outlet imag-
inable. She knows the importance
of financial fitness and lives it dai-
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