La. Dept. of Insurance Wins Pair of Louisiana Press Women Awards for Consumer Outreach Activities

The “Ask Robert Wooley, Your Commissioner of Insurance” consumer column has once again won a first-place award in the annual Louisiana Press Women’s communications competition. A new entry for the Department, the “Get Smart About Insurance” media campaign, took first place in the media kit category.

The Press Women presented the awards at the annual LPW communications awards banquet on April 24 in Opelousas, said Commissioner Wooley. As first-place winners in the awards competition, the column and the media kit will automatically become Louisiana’s representatives in their respective categories at the National Federation of Press Women 2004 annual communications conference this September in Lexington, Kentucky.

The weekly “Ask Robert Wooley” column provides insurance consumer tips in a question-and-answer format to all interested print media and television outlets in the state. Written in a simple, straightforward format, the column has won numerous first-place LPW awards in recent years. The “Get Smart About Insurance” campaign outlines an intensive schedule of state and local multi-media insurance awareness activities timed to coincide with national “Get Smart About Insurance” week activities of other participating states and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Department of Insurance staff and LPW members named as recipients of the awards were “Ask Robert Wooley” column editor Bobby Ann Clark and “Get Smart About Insurance” coordinator Laura Landry.

“Sometimes, insurance is not easy for people to understand,” Wooley said. “The weekly column and the ‘Get Smart About Insurance’ media activities are two of our most successful means of getting good information out there throughout the year.”

“Department of Insurance staff do a great job of putting consumer information material together,” he said, “but to actually get that information out to the people, we must rely on newspapers, TV stations and radio stations.”

The columns are also accessible on the Department’s Web site, at www.ldi.state.la.us, and are distributed to radio stations throughout the state in the form of a 60-second script.

“We at the Department are proud to share these awards with the many members of the media who care enough to take our message to their readers, viewers and listeners,” Wooley added. “Without their interest and participation, we would not be able to reach people across Louisiana with vital information on all kinds of insurance.”