FEMA’s 2024 Hurricane Season Campaign Communicates Flood Risk with Emphasis on Outreach to Multicultural Audiences

Campaign to Target New Audiences in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Haitian and Vietnamese Languages

WASHINGTON -- FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell announced today FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) will launch its 2024 Hurricane Season Campaign on April 29 and will target new communities using culturally competent messaging. The campaign communicates flood risk messages in six languages to residents in some of the nation’s most vulnerable locations affected by tropical storms and flooding.

“Given that hurricanes are intensifying and becoming more frequent, one of the most important steps homeowners and renters can take to prepare is to purchase flood insurance,” said Administrator Criswell. “Along with financial protection, flood insurance also brings peace of mind and we want multiple communities in hurricane-prone states along the coast to take advantage of these benefits. This is why we’re working to take cultural differences into consideration and add additional languages to our marketing for this important program. Our hope is to make flood insurance more accessible and common in households across America—especially in communities susceptible to flooding.”

Going into hurricane season, when flooding increases heavily, the six-month campaign encourages residents in hurricane-prone states to learn about the rising risk of flooding and obtain a quote for a flood insurance policy to help residents protect themselves financially. The campaign includes multicultural outreach to residents in hurricane-prone counties across Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.

This year’s campaign theme—Your Winning Choice— frames the choice to get flood insurance as actionable and transformative, since protecting yourself from loss is itself a big win. It shows that people should make a winning choice to get flood insurance and achieve peace of mind prior to a potential hurricane.

The 2024 hurricane campaign includes multilanguage strategic placements of radio, web and digital advertisements, interviews with local radio and television outlets, emails to insurance agents, new social media content and graphics and other materials targeting 48 million residents in more than 195 counties.

Multi-language Approach

To optimize and diversify its community outreach, the NFIP identified multiple languages spoken in each state targeted. To date, campaign advertisements have been created to connect with new audiences in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Haitian and Vietnamese languages. 

Vietnamese consistently appears in the top three languages across nearly all the campaign’s target states. To reach Vietnamese-speaking communities, the campaign includes banner advertisements, social media posts and a landing page on floodsmart.gov in the Vietnamese language to complement the English and Spanish language webpages. 

This is the first time the National Flood Insurance Program has created a webpage in any language other than English and Spanish. Additionally, FEMA will pitch audio news releases touting the benefits of flood insurance to Vietnamese-speaking media.

The outreach is designed to be inclusive of multicultural audiences by delivering important information to a variety of different communities and aligning with FEMA’s 2022–2026 Strategic Plan of instilling equity as a foundation of emergency management. The NFIP also offers print publications in these languages.

Importance of Flood Insurance

The National Flood Insurance Program provides about $1.2 trillion in coverage to approximately 4.7 million policyholders across the nation. 

Over the past 20 years, 99% of counties in the United States have experienced a flood event. Most homeowners’ and renters’ insurance does not cover damage caused by flooding.

“Flood insurance can be the difference between recovery and financial devastation,” said senior executive of the National Flood Insurance Program David Maurstad. “No one can control when flooding happens, but we can take control of how to protect our homes, possessions and businesses. With the climate landscape we now face, don’t delay another day, call an insurance agent and get the coverage you need ahead of this hurricane season.” 

There is typically a 30-day waiting period for a flood insurance policy to take effect. To find a flood insurance agent online go to floodsmart.gov/find.