A foundation promoting life insurance is having Cupid aim his arrow, literally, at consumers in its latest effort to boost life insurance sales before Valentine’s Day.

The LIFE Foundation’s new awareness campaign, “Insure Your Love,” launching later this month, plans to tie buying life insurance to love and humor.

“It’s the perfect campaign at the perfect time for insurance professionals to remind their clients and prospects of the need to protect the ones they love through proper life insurance planning,” said Jon Dressner, LIFE’s senior vice president and chief creative officer, in a statement.

The campaign’s launch comes as life insurance sales remain flat, in large part because of the economy. Even with a 4.1% increase individual life policy applications in November 2009, compared to the same period the prior year, overall applications fell 0.4% between January 2009 and last November, according to the MIB Life Index.

The LIFE Foundation, which holds an annual September Life Insurance Awareness Month campaign, said it hopes the new campaign will spark increased discussion among agents and their clients.

“Our hope is that Insure Your Love will become a potent marketing opportunity in the first quarter of the year, similar to what Life Insurance Awareness Month has become in the latter. It gives the industry yet another chance to engage consumers in a dialogue about life insurance, but in a way that is lighthearted, fun and emotional,” Dressner added.

In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, the LIFE Foundation is encouraging insurance companies and producers to “hitch a ride with Cupid” to get their clients and prospects thinking about life insurance, the group said.

As part of the campaign, an actor portraying Cupid was enlisted to ask people on the street about their views on love and life insurance. The microsite for the campaign will feature Cupid interviews, beginning in mid-January.

“People will do just about anything to avoid focusing on their life insurance needs, so we’ve decided to use humor to make the subject more approachable,” Dressner said.