Nationwide's got your ring.

Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. is offering its catchy, almost 40-year-old jingle "Nationwide Is On Your Side" to cell phone users, who can download the jingle to use as their ring tone.

Called "jingle casting," the phenomenon is a growing trend, Nationwide said. Customers and jingle fans can download the jingle for free from Nationwide's Web site, www.nationwide.com.

Offering the ring tone, through MIDIRingTones, is part of Nationwide's new $58 million "Life Comes at You Fast" advertising campaign to increase brand awareness, said Steven Schreibman, vice president of advertising for Nationwide.

"The fact that we are the only big player in the industry to have a jingle...that is our equity," Schreibman said. "Why not personify it in a very unexpected, surprising way?"

Coca-Cola was the first to allow its jingle to be cell phones in Japan. he believed Nationwide was the first company to do so in the United States.

As to who might be interested in hearing the Nationwide jingle when their cell phones ring, likely candidates include "people who are very loyal to Nationwide: employees, policyholders, shareholders and retirees ... and anyone else who's really cool," Schreibman said.

The "Life Comes at You Fast" ad campaign also includes television commercials, print and billboard advertisements, as well as other unusual methods, such as lighting up the Nationwide headquarters building in Columbus, Ohio, with the Nationwide slogan, and wrapping city buses in vinyl embossed with the company's logo.