No matter how much they annoy us, commercials and advertisements are an essential part of television. They are a way for companies to use rhetoric to persuade an audience to buy a product or service. Many companies use common rhetorical strategies, such as pathos, ethos, and logos. However, GEICO takes a completely different approach. At first glance, one might not even understand the reasoning behind their rhetorical approach (if you can even include it as rhetoric).
It turns out that GEICO commercials contain a lot more rhetoric than what appears on the surface. Although they range from witches on broomsticks to a slinky on an escalator to a body builder directing traffic, every GEICO commercial has the common theme that choosing GEICO will make you happy. They portray this theme through a very unique rhetorical strategy, creating a memorable and entertaining advertisement that does not pressure the audience to do anything. In fact, most of the advertisements have nothing to do with GEICO or the benefits of choosing GEICO over competing companies. Why then are these advertisements so effective?
By studying their audience, the creators of the GEICO advertisements are able to make a commercial that will capture the audience’s attention and stick in the audience’s mind long after viewing the commercial. They also reach the emotional weaknesses of the audience. The commercial is designed to make the audience feel relaxed and happy about the service. By associating a positive feeling with GEICO, the audience finds it more favorable than competing companies and will probably tell others about it. Spreading the word is important to the company because it is free advertisement. It spreads a good feeling about the service without any extra work.
Therefore, although GEICO does not use a common rhetorical strategy, it still successfully uses rhetoric to manipulate the audience and persuade each person to spend money on their service.
http://www.geico.com/about/commercials/
Sure, the rhetoric makes it memorable, but personally, I’d never just buy insurance from Geico because they had a funny or strange or cute commercials. These commercials might make Geico a household name, and a recognizable brand, but how helpful is that to their actual sales ? I’m not sure…depends how weak and impressionable consumers of the moment are.
Have you ever seen a commercial, and you can remember every single detail about that commercial, but you have no idea what it was for? That’s how I start to feel about a lot of these commercials. When GEICO used the gecko in all of their commercials, I could instantly discern what company the commercial was for. On the other hand, I went for weeks loving the car commercial with the little girl “turning on the engine,” but to this day, I have no idea what car it was. I’m starting to think that sometimes rhetoric hinders, rather than helps. Too much making the audience laugh or say awww! and you lose the purpose for the commercial. It’s all about the balance.
Geico’s uncanny use of rhetoric is what sets their company apart from other insurance companies. They present a situation in which insurance is needed and rather than them telling you they allow the depiction to speak for itself which yields greater results.