Overview

Increases in severe weather events associated with climate change have increased the risk of flooding for businesses, homeowners, and entire communities. Flood insurance provides reliable protection against catastrophic flood-related losses–to structures and personal property. Flood insurance ensures that policy holders can recover from floods, quickly and completely.

Challenges

Greater adoption of flood insurance is key to FEMA’s resilience mission. Nationally, however, the “penetration rate” of flood-insurance coverage is 4%. A major campaign goal was to educate property owners about the real risk of flooding and flood-related damage—and to change behaviors about purchasing flood insurance to reduce risk. Research and consumer surveys found that people who think they are at low risk of experiencing flood-related property loss aren’t likely to buy flood insurance—even if the actual risk of flooding is much higher. Perception drives behavior.

Strategy

Fueling property owners’ misperceptions of flood risk are fallacies of thinking, such as “even if it happened to my neighbor, it won’t happen to me” and “my neighbors don’t have it, so why should I?” This national campaign focused on property owners who could most benefit from flood insurance as well as agents positioned to facilitate purchase of flood insurance. Secondary audiences included property owners who have less risk but are still vulnerable to flood-related losses. Social norming and application of behavioral change theory can soften or remove perceptual barriers. We developed a strategy of messaging and creative assets to change behaviors by changing perceptions, such as overconfidence and perceptual biases.

Solution

Campaign messaging was positive, educational, and intended to bridge the divide between property owners’ perceptions of risk and actual risk, which is much higher. The strategy was to use perceptual change to drive behavior change (e.g., purchasing flood insurance). Our behavioral research supported use of personas. We nurtured consumers’ understanding of flood risk and cultivated awareness of flood insurance as a positive solution. We developed campaigns focusing on the causes of flooding in different regions of the country. Deployed resources included integrated communications, advertising, public relations, events, digital, and social media, behavioral change communications: 

• Integrated strategic plans and media strategy

• Creative concepts

• Advertising television, radio, digital, print, paid social and media partnerships, etc.

• Organic social and digital media

• Earned media

• Executive support

• Conference support

• Success stories

Results

In 2023, we developed a mix of communications across a variety of media, including 2,286 campaign deliverables, driving strong annual results and year-over-year increases (in parentheses):

• 2.6M visits to the website (6%)

• 573M advertising impressions (261%)

• 31M earned media impressions (455%)

• 161,000 consumer goal conversions (383%)

• 1.45 policyholders reached through direct mail (101%)

• 6K social media followers (100%)

• 203K unique email opens among industry and stakeholders (223%)

• 245K+ publications ordered (stable)

• 1058 direct interactions with key stakeholders and conferences (211%)

We reimburse media companies on time which resulted in greater discounts on future buys. We were able to agree to terms that yielded ranges of 3-7% discount.

Conclusion

A regression analysis of our hurricane campaign showed positive impact on flood insurance policy growth. We are working with NFIP to promote its new agent registry, enabling individual agents to connect directly with potential customers, and a new quoting tool will allow consumers to directly get a quote for flood insurance – actions that signify behavioral change.

Feedback

“I’m really excited about this [campaign] because it’s really putting our money where our mouth is and not just paying lip service to FEMA strategic priorities.”–Acting Assistant Administrator for Federal Insurance at FEMA

Awards

• Silver Anthem Award, Video, “Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion – Community Outreach,” 2024 

• American Advertising Awards – DC, Silver Addy, Video Series, 2024

• American Advertising Awards – DC, 4 Silver Addies in: Film, Video & Sound / Television Advertising – Regional/National / Campaign, Elements of Advertising / Visual / Illustration – Series; Elements of Advertising / Film & Video / Animation, Special Effects or Motion Graphics; and Elements of Advertising / Visual / Art Direction – Campaign, 2022

• Hermes Platinum Award, Integrated Marketing Campaign, 2023

• 7 AVA Digital Platinum Awards in Digital Advertising Campaign, Display Ad – Animated or Video, Commercials, Editing, Graphics/Design, Special Effects/Animation, Short Form Web Video, 2022

• Platinum Muse Award, Outdoor Advertising, 2022

• 4 Muse Gold Awards in Integrated Marketing, Video, Experiential & Immersive, Audio, 2022

• Gold Stevie (American Business Awards), Marketing Campaign of the Year Government/Institutional/Recruitment, 2022 and 2023

• 4 Muse Gold Awards in Integrated Marketing, Video, Experiential & Immersive, Audio, 2022

• Communicators Awards, Award of Distinction, Integrated Campaigns, 2022

• Communicators Awards, Award of Distinction, Film and Video, 2023

• National Association of Government Communicators, Blue Pencil & Gold Screen Award, Educational or Promotional Campaign, 2022