Visual Rhetoric First Draft

David Thomas
English 103 Section 33
Visual Rhetoric Assignment

Are You in Good Hands?

The piece of visual rhetoric I chose to analyze is a commercial for Allstate insurance. The commercial features a line of cars traveling down a seemingly endless road. The passengers in these cars are teenagers. A sad song plays in the background. The voice-over comes in about 30 seconds into the commercial, “Every year, nearly 6,000 teenagers go out for a drive, and never come back. Just talking to them can change that.” The commercial ends with the appearance of the words, “Start the conversation,” followed by “Parent-Teen Driving Contract,” and finally, “Allstate. You’re in good hands.” Each of these elements is a rhetorical device meant to influence the viewer. These rhetorical devices fall under various categories, and each is meant to affect the viewer in a different way. The overall goal of this piece of visual rhetoric is twofold. Firstly, this commercial attempts to encourage parents to talk to their kids about safe driving, which will hopefully then lead to fewer potentially tragic car accidents. And secondly (and arguably more importantly), it tries to establish in its viewers’ minds the idea that Allstate is a company who cares about people.

This commercial’s primary means of influencing its audience is through the use of pathos. It provides an excellent demonstration of the power of pathos to influence people’s emotions. Many of the elements of this commercial make an emotional appeal toward the viewer. The first thing that you hear in the commercial is “From Where You Are” by Lifehouse, a bittersweet song about how if feels to miss a loved one who has gone away. This is an example of pathos because it invokes the feeling of sadness in the viewer. The song is a crucial element in this pathos-driven commercial; it sets the tone for the whole piece. Can you imagine how different the commercial would be if instead of “From Where You Are,” the commercial’s soundtrack featured “The Entertainer,” by Scott Joplin? “The Entertainer” is an entertaining, happy tune that invokes positive emotions like happiness and humor. A song like this has no place in this commercial because it sets the wrong mood for the message being delivered. Teenaged auto accident fatalities is not a cheery subject; it is a sad, regretful subject, which is why it was paired in this commercial with a sad, regretful song. The next rhetorical element in this commercial is the image of teens driving on a seemingly endless, isolated road that appears to lead nowhere except away from home. This is also an example of pathos because the image of thousands of cars carrying thousands of kids away from home, never to return, invokes a strong emotional response in this commercial’s viewers. Like the accompanying song, this pathetic device is also meant to invoke a sad emotional response in the viewer. The power of this image is not manifested until the voice-over states that, “Every year, nearly 6,000 teenagers go out for a drive, and never come back.” This is the moment when the true nature of the commercial is revealed. Prior to this point, viewers did not know what the image of teens driving on a suspiciously nondescript road meant. Once this revelation has been made, however, the viewer is instantly hit with one of the saddest realities of the world in which we live: thousands of teenagers die each year as a result of unsafe driving. These deaths are devastating to the families of these teens. They come with no prior warning; as the voice-over puts it, they were just going out for a drive just like they would on any other day. These realizations invoke a powerful emotional response. They cause the viewer to imagine how they would feel if their own son or daughter were killed in a car accident. The voice-over also tells the viewer that just talking to their kid can help ensure that this does not happen. This statement is also pathos-driven. It carries the emotions of resolve and hope by instilling in viewers the idea that they have the power to influence the situation. The belief that they can help the situation influences parents to take Allstate’s advice and start a conversation with their kid about safe driving in an effort to reduce the likelihood that an unimaginable tragedy like this should affect their own family. This was one of the two main goals of the commercial, and I would imagine that they succeeded in this effort. If I were a parent, I would have had a conversation with my kid after seeing this commercial. Pathos is an immeasurably strong force of persuasion, and this particular commercial uses it very effectively.

Though it is clear that this commercial is primarily pathos-driven, examples of logos and ethos appear within it as well. I have already said that the voice-over message was an example of pathos, revealing the sad truth that 6,000 teen drivers die each year. However, the use of the number 6,000 is also an example of logos because it is an appeal based on logic or reason. The number 6,000 is a statistic, a measurement. It is a tool of persuasion designed to give the viewer a ballpark estimate of how many families are affected by this tragic occurrence every year.

In addition to including examples of pathos and logos, I believe that the commercial’s voice-over is also an example of ethos because it relies on the character of the speaker. Though the speaker is never seen in this particular commercial, his voice is enough for viewers to recognize him as Dennis Haysbert, the spokesman who speaks on behalf of Allstate in many of their commercials. You may remember him as the man who says, “Are you in good hands?” or “That’s Allstate’s stand,” or perhaps as President David Palmer from the TV series “24.” In any case, Allstate has invested millions of dollars in advertising, and one of their objectives in this regard is to establish Dennis Haysbert as a person you can trust, someone who you respect, and as someone who understands your situation as it relates to your car insurance. The fact that they used Dennis Haysbert as the voice on their commercial rather than, say, Paris Hilton, leads me to believe that Allstate purposefully intended to use Haysbert’s voice as an agent of ethos. Paris Hilton is virtually the opposite of Dennis Haysbert. She is not a person who you can trust, she is not a person who you respect, and she is not someone who knows much about how car insurance fits into the rest of your life. For these reasons, she would not make a very strong appeal to the viewer where a person like Dennis Haysbert would.

The influence of Dennis Haysbert’s respectable character is one way that this commercial attempts to achieve its second goal: associating Allstate with being a company who cares about people. However, I believe that the primary means of reaching this goal is in what the commercial doesn’t say. Everyone knows that Allstate makes money by selling insurance. Everyone also knows that it costs Allstate money to put commercials on television. And finally, everyone knows that the reason why Allstate invests in commercials is to increase future profits by influencing potential customers to buy insurance from Allstate. However, nowhere in this commercial does it directly suggest that viewers switch their insurance to Allstate. Instead, it simply suggests that parents talk to their kids about safe driving. The fact that Allstate paid for an advertisement that doesn’t even directly try to sell insurance makes Allstate seem like a selfless and charitable entity. It causes people to believe that Allstate cares about more than just making money, that they also care about the people they insure, their families, and their community as a whole. I believe that this was the second part of Allstate’s goal for this commercial, and that, as they were in achieving the first part of this goal, they were also successful in accomplishing this one.

This commercial attempted to do two things: to encourage parents to talk to their kids about safe driving and to establish in its viewers’ minds the idea that Allstate is a company who cares about the people it insures, and even those it doesn’t. In order to reach these goals, the commercial relied mostly on pathos and ethos, creating a somber mood using powerful rhetorical images and music and also relying on the audience’s perception of the character and qualities of Allstate’s spokesperson. Speaking objectively, I believe that the creators of this commercial achieved these goals in a remarkably effective manner. Not only do I believe that this commercial succeeds at persuading parents to talk to their kids and at establishing goodwill toward Allstate, I believe that it does so in a way that makes the commercial memorable to everyone who sees it.

Works Cited:

“Allstate Teen Drivers.” Uploaded June 27,2008. Accessed January 24, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7U_EXEso0o

“Scott Joplin – The Entertainer.” Uploaded August 8, 2006. Accessed January 24, 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cFkae0j_Ns

“David Palmer (24 character).” Modified January 19, 2009. Accessed January 24, 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Palmer_(24_character)

“Dennis Haysbert” Modified January 25, 2009. Accessed January 24, 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Haysbert

Crewell, Dustin; Draper, Melissa; Mitchell, Colin. “The Art of Rhetoric: Learning How to Use the Three Main Rhetorical Styles” Modified February 23, 1996. Accessed January 24, 2009. http://www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/webclass/web/project1/group4/