Paper One, Final Draft

Loful Elyardo

Professor Sanders

English 111

1 March 2013

Super Bowl 2013 “Allstate Forbidden Fruit” Ad Rhetorical Analysis

            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 hands”. 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 causes 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 it has been happening throughout history in a very dramatic way to get the viewers 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 that 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 bad the disasters are because it is well known around the world. The writer also made the audience identify more with the victims than with 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 wasn’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. 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 insurance that it 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.