A duck changed Dan Amos' life.

Amos, 56, is CEO of Aflac Inc., whose insurance business has soared since 2000, when it first aired TV ads starring a talking duck. Now Amos travels with stuffed ducks and wears a tie with ducks on it daily -- subtle duck prints for serious meetings and splashy ducks for TV interviews.

Aflac was founded by three brothers in 1955. Dan, who's father was of one of the founders, became CEO in 1990.

He leads a company with quirky advantages competitors could only dream of. Roughly 70 percent of its revenue comes from Japan. Aflac entered the market after Dan's uncle, John Amos, noticed people wearing surgical masks at the 1970 Osaka World's Fair and asked why. Answer: To keep from catching a cold. He concluded that anyone who would do that would buy insurance.

The Columbus, Ga.-based company's cost of doing business in the U.S. is also relatively low. Its salesforce is paid only by commission. When it was planning an expansion, the company got a $10 million incentive package that included a roughly 45-acre land donation in exchange for the promise to create 1,000 jobs.

What follows are edited excerpts from a recent Associated Press interview with Amos:

AP: You must have discussed business at dinner growing up.

Amos: I always learned that nothing happened until a sale is made. If you're not selling, there's nothing for the administrative people to do.

Q: What's the duck's story?

A: We only had two percent name recognition. I decided to start a national ad sales program, but seven years into it, we only had 10 percent name recognition. It would have taken my lifetime to get to 100 percent. I told agencies I would do anything, provided it was in good taste. A New York ad agency, Kaplan Thaler, came up with the idea of the Aflac duck; but they made a bet that no corporation would take the duck campaign, so they had a second option worked out.

The first week we ran the ads, January 1, 2000, we had more hits on the Internet than the entire year before. We knew we had a hit. We've made 34 commercials and we've gone from 10 percent name recognition to 92 percent.

People started asking for plush ducks. Now we sell ducks and donate 100 percent of the proceeds to kids with cancer. We've sold 10 million ducks in Japan.

All our research shows no one is getting tired of the duck, which is wonderful for us. There seems to be unlimited life on the duck. If it ever does wane, we are prepared to keep it going as a philanthropic arm, like Ronald McDonald.

Q: Much of your business in Japan has been sales through companies to their employees, a market that's changing with deregulation. You've launched a sales training program in Japan aimed at making the salesforce more aggressive. How's that going?

A: In the old days, we just mailed out flyers and the business came back in; but with deregulation, there's so much product. Consumers are seeing TV, radio ads for other companies and they're not sure which ones to buy. We're not allowed, by law, to do comparisons in advertising. It demands explaining our product in more detail. We've set up service shops to explain products and procedure.

Training our salespeople there to be more aggressive, it's very slow, it's difficult. My son (Paul S. Amos II), who started in our sales organization selling door to door, now runs the U.S. sales operation. I'm now sending him to Japan. He's working on that. It's easier for an American to push on sales than a Japanese person to push on sales.

Q: How do your ads differ in Japan?

A: The voice of the duck is different in Japan. It's Gilbert Gottfried in the U.S. In Japan, his voice is considered too strong.

In the U.S., the duck is ignored; only one person can see him. In the U.S., a lot of people feel they're ignored and they're not heard and they identify with the duck, subconsciously. In Japan, it would be rude to ignore someone. In Japan, everyone can see him. He dances, he plays an instrument and performs at people's weddings.

In Japan, a cartoon duck goes ga-ga. No one knows, "Quack, quack, Alfac." Everyone asks why we picked a duck, but the quacking explanation doesn't work there. I quit trying. I just say we picked him because he's cute and cuddly.

Q: Japan is 70 percent of your business, yet you have 600 more employees in the U.S. Why is that?

A: Our persistency rate is much higher in Japan. When they buy it and keep it forever, your administrative costs are much lower.

Q: What are your advantages as an American company in Japan?

A: We were the first company in Japan to ever have a female officer in the financial services arena. We now have four. As far as I know, there are still none elsewhere. That's helped recruiting. It's harder to get a job at Aflac in Japan than it is to get into an Ivy League school in the U.S. We have about 12,000 applications for 500 jobs. We're able to get all the top women in Japan.

Q: Your pay dropped from 2007 to 2008. Why was that?

A: We didn't have as good a year. Compensation, when you look at it, it's delayed. They study my compensation in August. That's the time they've gotten all the proxies from all the other companies. In 2006, Japan sales weren't as good and the stock was flat. Because our stock didn't move, that's what affected me.

Q: You were a commission-only salesman for Aflac for 10 years. Are you able to meet someone now and see if they'll be a successful salesperson?

A: As smart as you are, you can't tell who will make it. I saw people who, I thought, with that personality, there's no way they would fail, and they did. Then we hired a newspaper reporter from Pensacola, who was really shy and soft-spoken, but was so well trusted, he was incredibly successful.

That's one thing we're really careful about: Since the duck, you can't hire anyone who will tarnish the brand.

One group I always like to hire are coaches. They're highly educated, poorly paid and they work only nine or ten months a year. You have two months to test them and see how they'll do. And about half of our sales are from women.

Q: What's your take on the U.S. economy?

A: We've always done well, even with a soft economy. One of the last things people do is drop health insurance. We end up hiring more salespeople. In a recession, people will go to commission-only; they'd prefer a salary job, but if they can't get one, they'll take commission-only. They may make fewer sales each, but there's more of them.

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