Skip to main content

Geico 'Too Tall' Jones

I was watching TV and I saw a Geico commercial, where a guy dressed in a suit, looking fancy asks, “Could switching to Geico really save you 15 % or more on car insurance? Is Ed ‘Too Tall’ Jones, too tall?” It then shows Ed Jones at the doctor’s office. The nurse was trying to measure him, but she could not, because when she tried to measure him, the stick did not extend any longer. The commercial ends with the normal, “Geico. Fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more.”

I can see rhetoric in this commercial. The man in the beginning is dressed in a suit for a reason. A man looks must more trustworthy when wearing a suit and looks professional. This is part of “ethos”. This man is establishing trust between him and us, the viewers. He also makes a reference to Ed Jones. Ed Jones was a famous NFL football player, who played for fifteen years for the Dallas Cowboys and also attempted professional boxing. The man in the commercial is mentioning the famous football player, because he is well known. He is seeking commonality between him and the viewers. A lot of people know of Ed Jones, and by referencing him, he is using another part of ethos.
This is also a fallacy. It is an appeal to illegitimate authority. Geico is using a famous football player to represent part of their commercial. Ed Jones is not qualified to give information out about insurance, making him an illegitimate authority.

I think that this argument was not persuasive, at least for me because I am not interested in insurance, at least for now. I do think that the commercial did a good job of wanting to keep the audience’s attention, because of the way it starts out and finishes with Ed Jones. So it could be persuasive for someone looking for car insurance that likes Ed Jones.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Abigail OverbeyNovember 4, 2014 at 4:06 AM

    I have noticed that lots of commercials use men in suits to get you to trust them. I’ve mostly seen this done in credit card commercials and traveling agencies. I think that this happens because you assume that they must be good with their own money, so they would good with yours too. Suits are expensive and require money, which means that he was able to make the money and the first and that he was able to save it long enough to buy the suit. Seeing him looking well groomed and in a suit leads you to believe that he is most likely very successful and it is his success and put-together look that could lead you to trust him.

    Selena

    ReplyDelete
  2. Abigail OverbeyJanuary 22, 2015 at 5:49 PM

    I can tell you that the appeal to football does nothing for me, as I don't really care for sports... However, I do love a well dressed man. (; I think I agree with you about how the commercial is ineffective for young people like us who are not interested in insurance though.

    Liz

    ReplyDelete
  3. Clay BuxtonJanuary 22, 2015 at 5:50 PM

    Men in suits look great. But it does seem like they have more credibility, same thing with tall people in the case of "To Tall" Jones, because he is tall and freakishly tall he is different and should be looked up to. (No pun intended)

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownJanuary 23, 2015 at 7:44 AM

    I don't think this commercial is effective either because I am not interested in Ed Jones or car insurance. All it made me think about is that I want to be taller.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Marilyn Monroe's Shampoo

While browsing on Google I found an old advertisement.  The ad was for Lustre-Crème Shampoo. It featured Marilyn Monroe, known for her beauteous looks and her parts in different movies. One of her movies was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Lustre-Crème was attempting to sell their shampoo through the use of fallacies. By saying that Marilyn Monroe that tells you nothing about the actual product: it simply attracts you to the pretty face in the picture. Using this as an argument of why someone should buy your product is quite illogical. Just because Marilyn Monroe uses it doesn’t provide assurance of its abilities. They attempt using snob appeal by trying to make the audience believe that they could be like Marilyn Monroe if they use the same product as her. They use appeal to illegitimate authority by using Marilyn Monroe to promote their product. Although she herself is a customer, this is still rather irrelevant. She herself has no type of expertise in hair products and knows nothing that
3 comments
Read more

Open Happiness

While at the movie theaters to see The Maze Runner , I saw a commercial that featured rhetoric. The commercial begins with a young woman named Jess purchasing two Coca Cola drinks in a convenience store. One has her own name on it, and one has the name of her friend Alisha on it. The cashier watches her forlornly as she leaves, hinting that he has a crush on his customer. Jess gives the Coke with Alisha’s name on it to her friend, and together the two friends drink them. Later, Jess, Alisha and two other friends come back into the store to buy more Coke, then leave and have a good time together. Jess keeps coming back to the store with more and more friends, each time purchasing Coca Cola with their names printed on the labels. The cashier smiles and watches, but it is clear that he wishes he was with Jess.  Finally, as the cashier is closing the store for the night, Jess shows up at the door with a Coke that has the name Chris on it. She smiles and hands the drink to the cash
4 comments
Read more

Is Hip Hop a Cancer or a Cure?

The speech I watched was a Ted Talk presented by one of my favorite music artists, who just so happens to be a Christian rapper.  This rapper’s name is Lecrae Moore, but he just goes by Lecrae.  Over the past five years or so, Lecrae has been able to break out of the small box that Christian music and Christian rap have been put in, and he has been able to get his music out to all types of crowds.  So I was actually pretty excited when I saw that he had spoken at a Ted Talk in Nashville.  The speech he delivered was titled, “Heroes and Villains: Is Hip-Hop a Cancer or a Cure?”  In this speech Lecrae talked about how it is easy to look at certain people in history and label them as heroes or villains, but he talks about how not everyone views historical figures the same.  Lecrae started off by defining where we get the words, “Hero” and “Villain”.  Knowing the origin of these words really gave good context for what came to follow.  He then went on to explain the history of hip-hop.  W
5 comments
Read more