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Five Year Plan

While driving home one day I heard a commercial for Geico insurance. It was a guy talking about how he should have a 5 year plan, for his life. And when he told his girlfriend, he didn't include her in it. This got her mad and she broke up with him. So he said "Now I know to include my girlfriend in my plan, and I also know that Geico could save me %15 or more on car insurance".

Bringing up the Geico insurance was completely unrelated. First he was talking about one thing: his job, life, significant other, and now he is talking about car insurance. These two points are completely different. The beginning was only to engage the listener in the commercial. We are supposed to either feel bad or laugh about how he didn't include his girlfriend in his plan, and now he randomly brings up the point that he also learned about the "awesome deal" he could get from Geico. This can be perceived in two ways, either laughing at him, or an appeal to pity. We could be laughing at his stupidity, or feeling bad about him and his recent relationship problem. Either way this commercial brings the point way off topic to advertise a product that is unrelated to the point.

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Comments

  1. Kate weberMay 26, 2015 at 1:40 PM

    Even though the commercial just randomly brought car insurance up at the end, it did catch your attention, which was the whole point of it. The advertisement is not rhetorically sound, but it does serve its purpose.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeremiahJune 5, 2015 at 6:56 AM

    Everybody knows you can save %15 or more on car insurance by switching to geico. They can probably stop advertising it now

    ReplyDelete

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