Textual
Rhetorical Analysis: Allstate Insurance Company’s Television Commercial
To
view commercial, please click the following link:
Will
mayhem happen to you? Allstate says it can happen to anyone. Allstate Insurance
Company claims to protect people from “mayhem,” and their commercial shows bad
things happening to people in a satirical fashion. In their commercials they
personify the concept of mayhem. A man who calls himself “Mayhem” shows
different situations in which trouble can occur and when having insurance could
protect you. This commercial shows you the benefit of having car insurance. The
commercial uses logical, ethical, and pathetic rhetoric, artistic means to
communicate the message of the commercial.
In Chapter 10 titled, “Rhetorical Analysis: Understanding
How Texts Persuade Readers,” in the book titled What Writing Does and How it
Does it, Jack Selzer explains that “Aristotelian terms like ethos, pathos, and
logos, all of them associated with Invention, account for features of
texts related to the trustworthiness and credibility of the rhetor (ethos), for
the persuasive reasons in an argument that derive from a community's mostly
deeply and fervently held values (pathos), and for the sound reasons
that emerge from intellectual reasoning (logos).”
The
Ethos is the ethical artistic means of rhetoric. It is the rhetor’s ability to
make the audience to trust them. In this commercial, the man says that he is a
teenage girl, but they don’t actually use a teenage girl in the commercial. It
could be argued that Allstate Insurance casted a grown man in the commercial
who is claiming to be a teenage girl because their audience will be more likely
to seriously listen to the message being communicated. However, they may have
used this man because he has been casted as “Mayhem” in all of their other
commercials, or simply because it adds humor to give him different props
depending on which character he is playing (i.e. a teenage girl, a dog, a
raccoon).
Allstate also uses
Logos, the logical artistic means of rhetoric to communicate their message in
this commercial. They take a man claiming to be a teenage girl and in the very
first scene show him driving away from the mall. There are so many logical
details to this initial scene. The man is driving through a mall parking lot,
wearing pink sunglasses, and driving a pink truck. It is logical that the
audience of this commercial would picture the stereotypical teenage girl in
such a way and in such a setting.
They also use logic in
assuming that the audience would think a teenage girl would most likely be
talking or texting on her cell phone while driving. It is has become a common
stereotype that teenage girls are always on their cell phones and use texting
abbreviations when speaking, such as BFF and OMG. It is also implied that
teenage girls are over dramatic, or become “emotionally compromised.” A third
case of using logic is shown by Mayhem hitting another woman’s car because it
makes sense that a driver, especially a teenage girl, would be distracted from
driving safely by using a cell phone.
Allstate shows how easily and how often car
accidents can happen, even when it is not the viewer of the commercial’s fault.
It is at this point that they use the third artistic means of rhetoric: pathos.
They appeal to the audience’s emotion. By showing how easily car accidents can
happen and how much damage even small accidents can cause, Allstate is using
fear to motivate people to buy car insurance. They show Mayhem driving the pink
truck into a parked car causing the front bumper to be completely ripped off
(this may or may not be an exaggerated result of a small parking lot fender
bender). They state that without car insurance, or with an insurance company other
than Allstate, that the victims of accidents could be responsible for paying
for the damages.
There is an emotion
that is specifically not appealed to in this commercial. You’ll notice that the
car accident (or “mayhem”) happens to a completely innocent person. They show
someone else, such as an irresponsible teenage girl – or a man pretending to be
one – causing the accident. They don’t make the audience feel like the accident
would ever be their fault because that would put them in a defensive position.
Or the audience would think that an accident wouldn’t happen to them because they
are safe drivers.
Allstate’s audience doesn’t include teenage girls.
Teenage girls don’t typically purchase car insurance. Their parents buy it for
them. Allstate’s target audience for this commercial is adults and parents who
own cars and who may also assume how irresponsible teenage girls can be.
In this commercial,
Allstate is showing that bad things can happen to anyone and they try to appeal
to the audience how likely they are to happen. They leave the audience with the
feeling that since bad things can, do, and will happen, that the audience
should turn to them in order to be protected financially before the bad things
happen. “So get Allstate. You can save money and be better protected from
Mayhem like me.”
References:
Selzer, Jack. “Rhetorical Analysis:
Understanding How Texts Persuade Readers.” What
Writing Does and How it Does it, (September 2003), pp. 279-303. Print.
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