Columbus — For years, Aflac's memorable duck commercials have advised would-be buyers of the company's supplemental insurance policies to "ask about it at work."

But American employers, who are watching their bottom lines and increasingly shifting more of the costs associated with benefits to their employees, were asking a different question: "How much is this going to cost me?"

Company executives say the cost to employers is zero, and they have invested heavily in a multimedia advertising campaign that still employs the duck character, but puts a new twist on the traditional message and aims it at businesses — particularly small ones.

"The duck really spoke to the consumer, but all along there has been this hurdle in-between of also selling the business owner," Paul S. Amos II, Aflac's president and chief operating officer said here during an interview at the company's global headquarters.

"We needed to go out and build a marketing campaign that would not only talk about the features and benefits of why it was good for the business' decision maker but to recognize them individually for what they're doing and build value in the Aflac program surrounding it."

The focus on businesses is part of Aflac's ongoing strategy of targeting market segments it has identified as being rich with potential.

In the last few years, Aflac has forged partnerships with the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Latino Coalition as well as developing a Spanish language web site, enespanol.aflac.com, for that audience.

The company also has targeted women — who make the majority of household purchasing decisions — through sponsorships of sporting events that they are interested in such NASCAR and the Aflac Iron Girl National Event Series, a national endurance competition for women held in multiple cities across the United States throughout the year. The tour has scheduled a triathlon at Lake Lanier Islands Resort on June 29.

For the focus-on-business initiative, which was launched in April, the company created a separate Web site, www.aflacforbusiness.com,to answer common questions from business owners. The focus also meant a different approach with the television and print advertising. Initially, the duck campaign, which started in 1999, was designed to create consumer awareness and build name recognition for the company in the United States.

Although Aflac is an American company, nearly 75 percent of business comes from Japan, where it it insures 25 percent of households there through its various policies.

But in the United States, Aflac, which reported first quarter profit of $474 million or 98 cents per share, does business through six percent of U.S. businesses.

The business component is crucial as 95 percent of Aflac's sales is through workplace payroll deductions, said Amos, who is a third-generation member of the founding family and son of Chairman Daniel P. Amos. So the business-focused ads, which had their print debut in April followed by television spots last month, are different from the predecessor commercials in that they attempt to tell the business owner how offering supplemental insurance helped specific companies.

One print ad, for example, features an ice cream company that now offers the Aflac's supplemental insurance products. The come-on: Doing so will help in the recruitment efforts and employee morale.

Besides those two perks for the employer, the other key points Aflac is trying to convey to businesses are that it costs employers nothing since the premiums are entirely bourne by the employee, helps retain employees, is easy administratively and can provide some tax savings.

The company says it's too early in the campaign to get hard numbers on the return it's generated but executives are pleased with the results so far.

That the campaign — which includes ads in national media such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Fortune as well as the business networking site LinkedIn — has evolved to be more explanatory to segmented audiences makes sense, said B.A. Albert, president and chief creative officer of Grey Atlanta.

"They've got that base line and they need to build on it to reach the business owners," Albert said. "ING had the same problem. People knew the name but they didn't know what products they offered."

The campaign also is designed to address another concern voiced by business executives which, ironically, stemmed from the rising popularity of the duck ads.

As the Aflac name grew into a household icon, Amos said many small business owners began thinking the insurer's products were mainly were geared to larger firms, even though 90 percent of the more than 400,000 businesses that offer Aflac policies, have fewer than 100 employees each.

"We're going after small businesses but small business — because of the Aflac brand and the duck — began to think we were only for large companies and so we needed to go out with a special campaign to small business and speak to them about how we offer the same pricing to the smallest businesses in the country as we do the largest businesses in the country," he said. That's not the only factor, though. Amos, who had been the company's sales coorodinator for Aflac's North Georgia region from 2002 to 2005, revamped the training sales agents received when they were hired. Some agents complained that they weren't receiving enough training and different regions had different ways of doing business.

But the success of the North Georgia operations following the implementation of the new training procedures — it was the top-selling of Aflac's 87 state regions as ranked by new premium sales — led to him being tapped to roll them out nationally.

"Our old mantra of recruit, recruit, recruit has been replaced by retain, retain, retain," he told a group of Wall Street insurance analysts last month at an investor's conference in New York.

The goal is to get the more than 71,000 sales agents to increase their average weekly production. The program is designed to make Aflac an attractive employer and one with a reputation for stellar grooming of its staff for leadership roles, much like GE enjoys, he said.

Last year, the average number of associates with higher weekly production rose six percent from the previous year.