• by Tanya Gazdik , June 6, 2016

Race car driver Danica Patrick is sharing her personal story to encourage consumers to buy life insurance.

Patrick is serving as spokesperson for Life Insurance Awareness Month. The annual campaign, which takes place in September, is coordinated by the nonprofit organization Life Happens to encourage the nearly 100 million Americans who do not have adequate life insurance.

Her message in the TV spot is straightforward. “Driving race cars is risky. Not having life insurance is riskier. It means leaving your loved ones to suffer financially if something happened to you,” said Patrick. And that is something her family knows firsthand. Both her parents lost their fathers when they were teens. Neither had life insurance. Patrick’s mom was one of five kids and remembers her mom — Patrick’s grandmother — having to sell off most of the family farm as a result.

Patrick’s family is not unique. A third of all U.S. households would have immediate trouble paying for living expenses if their primary wage earner died unexpectedly, including a quarter of those with life insurance and half of those without any life insurance. Half of U.S. households would feel the financial impact from the loss of their primary wage earner in just six months, according to the 2016 Insurance Barometer study by Life Happens and LIMRA. 

Research shows that a majority of Americans recognize the importance of life insurance and understand they need more protection, but are not making moves to purchase a policy. According to the 2016 Insurance Barometer Study conducted by Life Happens and LIMRA, while nearly nine in 10 consumers (86 percent) agree that most people need life insurance, national ownership levels of life insurance remain near record lows.

“My parents made a point to instill financial responsibility in both my sister and me at a young age, to avoid the financial hardships they had endured as kids,” Patrick says in the TV spot.

The nationwide effort includes a national TV and radio PSA program that will begin broadcasting the week of June 6 and continue until the end of the year. The PSAs will be available on the Life Happens Web site, along with educational information and interactive tools such as the Life Insurance Needs Calculator (www.lifehappens.org/howmuch) to help consumers evaluate their own life insurance needs. 

The PSA will also run on social channels like Facebook and LinkedIn, and there will be some paid support behind it, says Matt Derrick, executive vice president of marketing and programs at Life Happens.

“Every year we look for a spokesperson that has a personal story of how the death of a family member affected them,” Derrick tells Marketing Daily. “While Danica’s occupation underscores the need for protection, it was her story of loss -- her grandmother had to sell their family farm to pay the bills after her grandfather died -- that emphasized even more just how important life insurance is in protecting families.”