Exercise #3: Find an advertisement that uses an appeal to fear. Is it a good argument?
One type of ad that I constantly see using appeals to fear is the car insurance advertisements for Allstate Insurance. Rather than simply stating that their rates are lower than other insurance companies, they rely on footage of accidents or scary facts about auto-related deaths. I found an example of one of Allstate’s advertisements for teen driving on YouTube. The teenagers are all in cars lined up and driving along a dark road. They look happy at the start of the commercial, but at the end they show the sad look on one teen’s face from the back window of the car as they drive off into the distance. The commercial states, “Every year nearly 6,000 teenagers go out for a drive, and never come back.” They end the commercial by telling their viewers to sign up for Allstate’s “Parent-Teen Driving Contract.” In this case the argument is a bad because a contract with an insurance company is not what is going to make your teenager drive more carefully. Instead, teens should be taught safe driving methods by their parents or a driver’s safety class. However, insurance companies will try to scare parents into thinking that their teen is more likely to get into a fatal car accident if they do not have a service offered by the company.
I am biased with Allstate’s advertisement. The reason is because it is a sad statistic that they are showing of how many teens loose their lives in car accidents. Also the visual of seeing a teen sadly drive away in car, not knowing if they will ever come back is heat breaking. This commercial does get to adults who have children because they want to make sure that their child is safe while they are driving so this may persuade them to purchase this insurance policy. Then I also agree with you that this commercial may also drive people to not want to let their teens drive because of the fear of loosing their child at a young age. Overall this is an ok advertisement on behalf of Allstate.
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