Friday, June 28th, 2024

AllState Mayhem Commercial (Entry #5)

Hello Everyone, 

In this blog post, I'll be diving into a rhetorical analysis of an Allstate Mayhem commercial. I guess now is as good as any other time to start practicing on how to write about rhetorical analysis when we have a big essay on it. Let's not jump in too quickly to all the rhetorical devices and persuasive techniques without watching one of their ads. 

video link: Cat vs Insurance Agent

Almost every American household nowadays has pets, so Allstate has already broadened its audience because almost everybody can relate to owning a pet. And in order to further relate to this pet-owning audience, Allstate targets them by showing the difficulties and mayhem that comes with raising a pet. But Allstate doesn't actually include a cat in the ad, but rather literally personifies "Mayhem" only having the actor act as your typical housecat. This plays into Allstate's genre as they try to amuse the audience/ public by making the public laugh because they have a full-grown man acting like a cat. The purpose of the ad is to show how easy and unpredictable your items can be damaged and how Allstate is able to provide reliable insurance. For example, in the ad, "Mayhem" acting as a cat turns on the faucet and leaves it running, it eventually overflows, and then the bathroom floor collapses into the living room. In a way, Allstate is trying to use fear tactics to convince people that this could happen to any of us because we're not always aware of what our pets are doing. Another subtle example is how Mayhem knocks over the candle near the end of the ad, although it's very brief, it causes viewers to think how clumsy their own pets could be and how their pet knocking over a candle and perhaps even starting a fire in their house can become a reality. Allstate still keeps their commercial playful throughout with their funny use of scenes. First off, we see Mayhem playing with a cat toy and even wearing a cat collar. We continue with Mayhem's cat antics as we see him slapping one of the owners and then dropping a mouse on the owner's face. We also see Mayhem hissing while sitting on a Roomba, coughing up bird feathers, and eating cat food. Allstate also uses funny lines to keep the audience engaged, Mayhem says: "This is a billion years of tiger DNA just ready to pounce." This makes for a good pun, but also serves to remind viewers that pets are going to be pets, they will always be clumsy and destroy something without understanding what they did. They throw in another pun with the last line "Be better protected from mayhem like meow", it's also a parody of their catchphrase as it's usually just "like me". 

Anyways, that was my rhetorical analysis on the Allstate Mayhem commercial, I'm looking forwards to seeing which one's you guys chose! 

-Tristan Cheung