Critical Analysis - Jovan Tewira

Jovan Tewira

Professor Nayanda Moore

ENGLISH 11000-B

April 20^th, 2015

“My Dad’s Story, Dream for My Child” Critical Analysis

An insurance company is really important for everyone in improving life, in today’s society. A lot of random bad things could happen to anyone anytime, especially in financial aspect. Therefore, an insurance company is able to insure that when a bad situation occurs, it would not affect people’s life, badly and severely. MetLife, Inc., the holding corporation for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, is one of the well-known insurance companies in the world whose works have been proven through their great service toward the customers. Its headquarter is located in New York City. The sole purpose of the company is to help people to get through an unwanted situation in an impromptu situation, such as bankruptcy. Their products are insurance services, such as Life, Dental, Disability, Annuities, Auto and Home, and Critical Illness Insurances. There are a lot of achievements that MetLife has achieved, such as “Best Managed Insurance Company for 2008” by Forbes Magazine. Also, MetLife was on the list of “Top 50 Companies for Diverse Managers” in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. MetLife was named as the first National Insurer in the U.S. to offer identity-theft resolution services at no extra premium and still continue to do so until now. From all these achievements, we can see that how professional the company is in managing and serving their customers regarding their services and products that they sell.

Advertising is the major part in selling anything. MetLife promotes their products through advertisements on television. Usually, Insurance ads on TV are not straightforward telling the audiences about their products. Most of the time, they tell a sad story about some aspects in our lives. One of their inspiring ads is “My Dad’s Story, Dream for My Child”. I found this inspiring because the story is about a father who working really hard and trying to do his best to make him and his daughter to survive, and most importantly to make his own daughter happy. He did it without telling his daughter because he is afraid that when he tells this to her, she is going to feel bad and unhappy about it. In the beginning of the story, there are a father and his daughter who are walking in the park while the father is reading a letter that his daughter writes about him. All that his daughter knows about her father is that he is so hard working, generous, kind, and dependable. But, all of it turns out to be lie. The truth is that he does not have anything much for his family. Eventually, the daughter knows it all and in the end of the letter, she said that her dad is a liar because she knows that her dad actually is really tired and stressed over everything, but still her dad does not want her to know, just only to make her happy. In the ending scene, both father and daughter are seen hugging each other, as the father was very sorry because he has to lie to his beloved daughter. In my opinion, through this advertisement, the company does a good job in telling a story, but I think they don’t clearly tell the audiences about what products they are trying to sell to people. They only stated in the very end of the video, “We all have dream for our children. Share yours with us, and it could become reality”, which I think kind of vague because it could mean anything, not just offering some insurance services. They could do a better job in promoting this advertisement, if they could add something that can explain about what MetLife does, such as the list of services that the company provides for everyone. Therefore, everything would make sense from the purpose of the company and the purpose of the video, because not everyone knows MetLife really well, although it’s such a prestigious company.

According to the persuasion principles, this ad mainly focuses on pathos principle, which is using emotion to attract people. They use a story about a father and a daughter who were very happy in the beginning, but ended up making the audience tearing up. As I saw in my class, when this video was played, most people were really touched by the story; even some students were tearing up too. In general, pathos is the common way that people use in an advertisement to attract the audiences, because when people get emotional, they tend to be more interested to the matter and they will remember the advertisement better because the story. The way it works in this ad is that the viewers are shown a scene about a happy family life between father and daughter, then as the story goes, it becomes a really touching story that make people to be more interested to the story, and they would remember the ad is from MetLife. Also, it would make them think it over and over again about the things that the advertiser is trying to sell to the audiences. I think the company really did a good job in this ad with getting people emotional, in order to attract people to the advertisement. But in my opinion, I would say they could do better, if they were not only focused between a father and daughter story. Because of insurance is for everyone, I think they could make another touching story that related to everyone; like a whole family, friends, or any other people. Instead of just focusing on one family, they could make some number of scenes of different families about their difficulties within each of them. Then, in the end, they could make it emotional too by showing how they overcome their problems and change their life to the better. But, overall, they did a really good job in promoting the ad through the pathos principle.

There is a little logos principle in here. It is when they gave the statement “A child’s future is worth every sacrifice”. They want to inform people, especially parents, to be aware of their child’s future that they have to give the best for the sake of their future, and one way to make this happening is to have an insurance company, like MetLife. In my opinion, the logos is not very obvious to have people to notice. The statement has a really broad meaning. People who do not know MetLife, would have no idea what does the statement mean. When I tried to interpret the statement, I had to think twice also because it could really mean anything, and the assumption that I got was that it’s about the fact that the children deserves a better future, and in order to get that is by buying the services from MetLife. Alternatively, they could add statistics in the end about the impact of not having an insurance and having an insurance; or just the benefits of having an insurance to their lives. Therefore, people would get convinced about having insurance because there are some concrete proofs that the experts have done. If they did that, I think they would get more people to buy their products.

            Ethos, or ethical appeal, is not seen in this ad. I think they only use the logos and pathos through the entire story, which I think it, is not enough to convince the viewers yet. Ethos holds important part in the persuasion process too, as the definition is persuasion by the author credibility. Besides of just getting attracted to the ad and shown some proofs about the reality, the audiences should be convinced also that the person who says all of these is a dependable source that could be trusted in. In this ad, they could add some ethos by adding some testimonies from the satisfied customers about their service, or some information about the company’s achievements that were achieved because of their great customer services. Therefore the prospective buyers would feel really sure about their decision to assure their lives with the company’s services. In order to make people to be convinced, it is not only between the emotion and logic, they have to believe with what they see too, if they are not sure with what they are going to depend on, they will not even consider to do it.

            In conclusion, MetLife really did a great job at this ad, but I think there are some aspects that they could do better to make this ad more engaging and interesting. I realized that without telling the audience the really meaning about what they are trying to say, some people could get confused along with the story. They could think that “Yes, the story is good, but what is the meaning behind all of this?” They could assume that MetLife is not an insurance company, who is trying to promote their service, but it could be any other company. So, another thing that the parent company should fix is the clear interpretation of their ads.