Powerful Visual Rhetoric

Find a piece of visual rhetoric online (an ad, a political cartoon, a remixed video, whatever…). Introduce it, reflect on it, and invite discussion from your group members on it. Post the picture/video within your blogpost and be sure to give full credit to its location/creator.

When we were asked to find and reflect on a piece of visual rhetoric, I found myself thinking “Could this prompt be any broader?” We were told that the visual rhetoric could be an ad, a political cartoon, a remixed video… whatever, just as long as we made sure to give full credit to the piece’s creator. As a starting off point, I got on Google and typed the keywords “visual rhetoric.” Let me tell you what a huge help that was…. I got everything from the lecture notes of an English professor in Indiana to the Wikipedia definition, none of which were all that helpful. I already knew what visual rhetoric was; I simply needed a specific example of it, an example that spoke to me, if you will, and made me want to “reflect and invite discussion.” After a few minutes of perusing useless Google results, I recalled a television commercial that I saw last year. I found the commercial on YouTube and included it above for you to check out. The commercial was created by Allstate, and it promotes the Allstate Parent-Teen Driving Contract.

When I think of advertisements, I generally think of flashy fonts, loud spiels, and corny gimmicks. This commercial is nothing like that. You simply watch teenagers drive away in a line of cars miles long. The scene is very mellow – a scenic country highway set in dark, almost melancholy lighting. The music that accompanies these images is the song “From Where You Are” by Lifehouse. The slow, tender song serves to emphasize the sadness of the images. Viewers don’t really understand why the scene and the music strike them as so sad until the very last few seconds of the commercial when the Allstate voice suddenly states, very solemnly, “Every year, nearly 6,000 teenagers go out for a drive… and never come back.” It is with that statement that viewers are suddenly impacted by the imagery and symbolism of the commercial – thousands of happy teenagers driving away… into the unknown… never to return. As the scene closes, you see nothing but tail lights driving away from you and a young teenage girl looking pensively out of a rear view window. The song lyrics playing at that exact moment are "I never thought that they'd mean everything to me. Yeah, I miss you." The only other spoken words in the commercial are “Just talking to them can change that.” The powerful commercial ends with simply the Allstate logo and the words “Parent-Teen Driving Contract.”

I was very moved by this commercial. As an example of visual rhetoric, I found it to be incredibly effective. The intended audience, American parents, and the message are both very clear. What I found most admirable and sincere about the commercial was that the message did not seem to advertise Allstate for business purposes, but to promote communication between parents and teens to make the roads safer for adult and teen drivers alike.

I appreciated this commercial and was very touched by its message. I’m curious what others think of the commercial, though. Do you think that the people at Allstate are genuine in their concern for teenagers on the road? Are they legitimately promoting a Parent-Teen Driving Contract and trying to reduce the number of teenage driving fatalities? Or have they just come up with a new and clever way to advertise their company? What do you feel is the true intent of this commercial? Did it affect you in anyway?