Loful Elyardo
Professor Sanders
English 111
1 March 2013
In
the 2013 Super Bowl Allstate ran a very creative and incredible commercial. It
was certainly high quality and well deserving to be one of this year’s Super
Bowl commercials. Allstate, founded in 1931, is the second largest personal
lines insurer in the United States. It provides auto, home, life, and business
insurance and has a catchy slogan “Are you in good hand”. Allstate plays on the
slogan in this commercial by personifying mayhem that can occur in everyday
life using Dean Winters to portray” Mayhem”. In most of the mayhem commercials
Dean Winters causing accidents, car crashes, and natural disasters that
Allstate knowingly covers. At the end he asks “Are you in good hands”. In the
Allstate Forbidden Apple commercial “Mayhem” is the forbidden apple in the
Garden of Eden and he is sitting on a tree tempting Eve to eat him. As soon as
she takes a bite Adam also takes a bite, causing immediate chaotic events. A
lion that was sitting peacefully with a lamb a moment ago in the garden
suddenly eats it, and then a meteor crashes into the earth and kills all the
dinosaurs. The commercial goes through well-known catastrophes that happen in
history like the Liberty Bell cracking down the middle, the Great Chicago Fire,
The Trojan horse that destroyed Troy, and the sphinx’s nose falling off in
Egypt. Allstate makes sure the audience is entertained by all the visuals and
scenes and putting Mayhem in the middle of every event personifying the
disasters cleverly. At the end of all the chaos Mayhem is walking away from the
down the street and asks “Are you in good hands”. The Allstate logo ends the
commercial sealing the deal. Allstate should have done a better job with
putting in more logos to insure that the viewers will remember not just the
quote but their actually company name and logo but all in all it was very
persuasive. Allstate uses pathos, particularly the emotion of fear and anxiety,
in its forbidden fruit commercial by cleverly using logos of disastrous and
chaotic scenes in history. It plays on common sense showing viewers obvious
examples of disaster showing that’s it’s been happening throughout history in a
very dramatic way to get the viewers to get paranoid or scared. This commercial
influences the viewer to choose Allstate insurance using pathos and logos. It
shows that it’s important to be insured and they are they are the best bet in
any situation.
Pathos,
one of the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s three appeals, is Greek for suffering
or experience. From Ramage, an article John D. and John C. Bean wrote in the
4th Edition of Writing Arguments, they wrote “An appeal to pathos causes an
audience not just to respond emotionally but to identify with the writer's
point of view--to feel what the writer feels. In this sense, pathos evokes a
meaning implicit in the verb 'to suffer'--to feel pain imaginatively....” The
audience could identify with the pain and could imagine how the bad the
disasters are because it is well known around the world. The writer also made
the audience identify more with the victims than Mayhem. He is depicted as a
typical slick business man wearing a suit, the type of person people love to
hate. He also looks a little beat up like he hasn’t the most fortunate person
either. It hits home to many of the viewers and even more to all the football
fans watching when the writer depicts Mayhem as the person who picked out all
the replacement referees. This was an excellent strategy because he used humor
and played on the fact that this is a sporting event and it is very relevant.
It keeps the viewers entertained and they all know the level of disaster that
made for the sporting world, and it made it personal because that probably
makes them remember how the refs maybe screwed over their team or someone they
know. In all the scenes he was the main cause of the disaster for example he
was the one who let the Trojans bring the horse through the gates and he was
also the one who started the Great Chicago Fire. It makes the audience feel
angry and scared, but what can they do against this level of disaster, making
them feel hopeless. It leads them to the conclusion that the only thing to do
is to get insurance, Allstate insurance that is. This strategy by the author is
very effective by influencing and moving the viewer to action using pathos.
According
to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, ethos is “the distinguishing character,
sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution”.
Aristotle says good sense, good moral character, and goodwill inspire
confidence in the writer’s character that induces us to believe a thing apart
from any proof of it. He also states that good ethos doesn’t come from how a
person appears or what he wears but by how he speaks. Mayhem‘s rhetoric is very
untrustworthy. The way he presents himself is not someone you want to trust,
opposed and very different to the narrator. Most people know the narrator as
Dennis Haysbert. He is an American actor who usually plays roles of major
authority and people who remember his face usually remember that he is very
credible, always in command, and is the good guy. He plays Sergeant Major Jonas
Blane on the show The Unit, and action drama show based on the United States
army’s Delta Force. He also played as a senator who later on becomes the
President of the United States in the show 24. That alone gives him
credibility, eliciting respect from the viewers and the sense of feeling of
trust. His deep yet soothing voice also helps gain more ethos because he sounds
like a figure of a authority or a father figure. The writer chose the right
person that the viewers can listen to and actually want to listen to further
solidifying their decision and encouraging them to get insured for their own
safety.
As
far as logos goes, the commercial used this appeal strongly in some ways but
poorly in others. Writing Today states that logos is the appeal to reader’
common sense, beliefs or values. The writer uses examples, costs and benefits,
and anecdotes to appeal to the reader’s reasoning. All the disasters
demonstrate that chaos or mayhem can happen at any moment and it’s proven
throughout history. The commercial has many examples that support that claim
and the viewer would be foolish to believe otherwise. This whole commercial was
a giant anecdote, invoking laughter through a very real storyline of real
disastrous events from thousands of
years in the past to the present satirically It’s message is disaster happened
all throughout the past and the present so it can happen to the audience
whenever so it’s better to be insured. Allstate is telling the viewers going
through life without insure is not worth the risk because disaster can happen
at any moment. Dennis Haysbert says it best at the end of the commercial,
“Mayhem, has been and always will be everywhere. Are you in good hands?” This
solidifies everything the writer has been trying to tell the audience
throughout the whole commercial going back to Dennis to use a bit of logos and
ethos to inspire the viewer to choose Allstate insurance. They used logos
poorly when they didn’t advertise their Allstate logo or any association to
Allstate. This is a problem because the audience will not remember who exactly
made this commercial or what corporation it’s for because they are lost in the
glamour of the storyline. The company needs to advertise their logo and name
more because their biggest competition is State Farm who has a very similar
name and can be very confusing to the audience.
The
Forbidden Apple Allstate commercial for the 2013 Super Bowl effectively used
pathos, logos, and ethos to put out their brand and to influence the audience.
The commercial proved that people respond to messages more if it influences
their feelings or emotions. Manipulating a person’s feeling of fear and anger
causes stress and urgency. This causes the person more likely to do something.
What better way to ease someone’s stress by providing them with insurance. That was a very clever tactic to use keeping
what the company does in mind. When ethos was used it was effective because the
narrator was someone the audience can trust and want to believe every word.
This makes the audience vulnerable to his influence so they will want to go to
Allstate insurance because he said so and apparently he’s been a reliable
source. He is reliable based common sense because the information he is giving
the audience throughout the story is valid through logos. There is no way what
the narrator is saying is false as it is clearly depicted and everyone knows
those disasters from any and can find them in local libraries. These strategies
tie in together to effectively influence the audience.
