Life Insurance commercials that will make you cry

I have selected the campaign “Value of Life”. This is a campaign for the Thai Life Insurance company. I have chosen this campaign because I thought that these commercials were creative. They have made me feel extreme emotions. The way that they connect with the public, in my opinion, shows the human experience. It shows that life isn’t always good and it isn’t always sad but it is sometimes a bittersweet experience. The advertisement company that produces these commercials for Thai Life Insurance is the Bangkok branch of Ogilvy and Mather.

The history of the campaign comes from a thirty-year history of the campaign company working with Thai Life Insurance building the brand. This was done by creating a brand off of emotion. In an interview with the managing director of Ogilvy and Mather Bangkok Phawit Chitrakorn that was done by Robin Hicks from Mumbrella Asia he says, “we’ve been building the brand through emotional engagement for three decades”, (Hicks 2015). Chitrakorn believes that the Thai people want to see things at one extreme or another. This is how their attention is gain. “Thais are an extreme bunch, so if you want to connect with them, you need to go all the way, whether it is comedy or drama.”, (Hicks 2015).

The campaign has three purposes. They are “1. Intended to reinforce the brand belief; ‘Value of Life’ 2. To empower the people to believe in doing good and the real value of life, not judging people by their appearance and superficiality. 3. To be the host of good stories that inspires everyone to do and share goodness in society.”, (Thai Life Insurance-Unsung Hero 2014). This campaign wants to help and motivate and give encouragement in the lives of people. The campaign wants to reach all people for positivity and to pull in new customers. The way that they go about getting new members is through sending messages of emotional appeal. They want to reach people deeply by showing experiences that may or may not happen. Thai Life Insurance wants to use this to create a bigger number of customers. Chitrakorn in the interview with Hicks talks about people remembering the campaign when it is time for them to get insurance and remember that Thai Life Insurance “People need to be at a certain stage of life or suffer an incident that makes them stop and think about the desirability of an insurance policy. When that day arrives, the brand that they’re aware of, and think understands what they’re feeling, will be in the final running.”, (Hicks 2015).

Another type of message that is used in the campaign is that they are one-sided. They just promote Thai Life Insurance as something that will stay there when everything else goes badly. This is done through emotional appeal. The messages are narratives. They tell stories through the slogan of “Value of Life”. This is done by showing stories of people who go through struggles and hardships but start to understand what is important. This importance is their lives. The best way to value their lives is to get life insurance with Thai Life Insurance. This is shown from an example of one of the commercials being explained in an article by marketland.com. It states “Ogilvy & Mather Bangkok created a three-minute video for Thai Life Insurance. The video told the story of a girl and her deaf/mute father.” (Thai Life Insurance Ad Celebrates Beauty of Life 2014).

It seems like Thai Life Insurance measures success as of what I can tell in three various ways. One, of course, is having people buy life insurance from them. Another is to inspire others and to let people know that the company is there for them. This is the vision of the company. It states, “become a leading brand that inspires all life”, (thailife.com). The third measure of success for the company are accolades and being noticed globally. In 2015 Thai Life Insurance had won an award at the International Business Award. This award is known as Stevie. (Thai Life Insurance Co.). When asked which was his favorite commercial was Chitrakon had stated that one of his favorite commercials was one that had gone viral. “From the response, we’ve had globally, Unsung Hero is the number one favorite. It’s had over 17,000,000 views from 232 countries within four weeks launched. It’s has had 18,000,000 engagements. It’s the ninth most shared viral video in the world”, (Hicks 2015). From another video, there was a lot of viral sharing going on. “The TVC received 1 million views within the first week of release on YouTube, with only 0.6 percent dislike. It was shared on Facebook over 700,000 times during the first week. The TVC was translated and reported in several languages such as English, Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese. It was rank as the first Ad Critic on the creativity-online.com website. In turn, the TVC earned free media coverage on top local websites such as Sanook.com and postjung.com” (Case Study 2011). It is impressive that foreign commercials can get so much notoriety around the world. Some feel that because the campaign is so good at provoking emotions in people they think that this is on purpose. Some people think that it is trying to make them cry. It is not the intention of the company to make people cry. The viewers appreciating the “Value of Life” is what matters to the companies. Chitrakon says “The audience crying isn’t our main objective. However, we want people to appreciate the ‘Value of Life’”, (Hicks 2015).

There is no change in the type of campaign that is being run. The same idea is still being used. It seems that the company has found its niche in this market. This is shown through the type of messages it has. It is also proven through the popularity that it has grown to have over past years.

The feelings for this campaign is one that has a theme of making people cry. A writer at HuffPost Ryan Grenoble had written about one of the commercials. He says “once you’ve dried your eyes, maybe call your mom and tell her you to love her”, (Grenoble 2015).

The persuasive theory that I have chosen is to compare the campaign to a narrative. The target audience is people who do not have any kind of insurance. A lot of these people are not worthy. They appear to be older than thirty years old. They have all had some kind of accident or in need of medical accidence in one way or another. This campaign is telling people that they need insurance. It is showing them what life without it looks like. It shows how that can affect their lives and the lives of their family members. In some of the campaign varies. There are different problems. Different narratives are shown to cover situations that might be familiar with people and relate to them through their tragedies.

This campaign shows more than one person. It is usually someone who is ill and someone who is taking care of them. In some cases, some people might not have anyone to help them. If there is someone there the campaign shows that the illness of their family member is affecting them as well. This is seen as a burden.

These are narratives because stories are told that have consequences. There is always some kind of issue or obstacle to overcome in the campaign. Some of them come out good and some do not. The narratives, in any case, provide the solution. This solution is the product.

A fear appeal is used. This is defined as “a persuasive communication that tries to scare people into changing their attitudes by conjuring up negative consequences that will occur if they do not comply with the message recommendations”, (Nolan 196). This is what this campaign does. The negative action is not having life insurance and then getting into an accident or having a medical issue arise. The recommendation is to get life insurance with Thai Life Insurance.

Creating fear helps to push a message. Presenting ideas or stories no matter how outlandish they may appear can contribute to gaining the attention of the audience. In this campaign, some stories might be true as if they were based on a true story. As the viewer is looking at the campaign it is acted out. It is dramatized. There are parts of it that are shown specifically to provoke fear. “The persuader may have to go further than the facts of the situation warrant, raising specters and scenarios that may be rather unlikely to occur even if the individual continues to engage in dysfunctional behavior” (Nolan 196).

This kind of information warns people about the amount of harm that they could be in. It shows them that they can be in danger at any point in their lives. This type of information is known as severity information. This is classified as “information about the seriousness or magnitude of the threat”, (Nolan 200). This issue will increase and become even worse than it was, to begin with if the same way that the subject was behaving continues.

Making the afford to put fear into others is sometimes important in getting a message across or to sell a product. It’s like being on a spectrum. Putting something that the consumer does not want on one end and something you want them to purchase or agree with on the other end. It’s about moving the thing that they do not like, for example, the idea of not having any life insurance and their family not being able to afford the funeral cost and putting it in their face. Hopefully, they will more toward what the producer provides. It also introduces the fear of dying and hopefully, this fear can group the attention of the person so they can see that they need life insurance.

This is also a guilt appeal. The definition of guilt appeal is that it “arouses empathy to induce individuals to perform a particular helping behavior”, (Nolan 207). The helping behavior comes in two ways It is the someone is making their life easier by not worrying about medical bills and is covered for any unforeseen injuries or illnesses. This is them not going through the “ought to” or “should do”, (207). They are already prepared. The other helping behavior is people helping their family members by not having the family members worrying about the person who needs medical attention.

The analysis of a specific message will touch on a commercial from Thai Life Insurance’s 2007 commercial. It is the title “Merry Me”. This is about a woman who finds out that she does not have long to live. Knowing this her boyfriend asked her to marry him. In the end when the commercial goes black caption still go on, speaking about how the death rate for leukemia was 100% now it is treatable.

The title of the commercial has a double meaning. One meaning like someone marrying someone. The other is like someone being happy.

This uses pathos to make people emotional. This is so they are more vulnerable and more likely to buy life insurance. It shows how she feels about her sickness. It shows what they are doing while she is sick up to the point of her death. After the commercial gives hope in the form of buying insurance.

Pathos is important to relate to the audience. Grabbing people’s attention and making them feel comfortable is a wonderful way to then start to sell them products. It is about knowing a to understand that audience.

The speaker uses elements from Burke. The speaker relates to the audience by talking about topics that we are all familiar with. One is love. This is a family member, a friend or a significant other. The other is death. We have all lost someone near and dear to us in our lives. We would do whatever we can to the people that we love. We do not want the people that we love to die even though it will happen.

Another topic that Burke touches on is changing the status quo. We can at least have the power to change this from happening so soon. We can help to treat them. It’s even better now because that ability was not as accessible as it is now.

A lot of symbols were used during the commercial. A coffee cup is thrown by the woman. The narrator says that she had broken up with her boyfriend. This symbolized them breaking up. The video is gloomy in the present compared to glimpses of the past. This symbolizes that the present is not that good as it was. It symbolizes the looming of death. There is a dead flower shown on the floor after the woman dies. This is her.

I think that this was manipulation. This is because for the whole time no one could be aware that this was an insurance ad. It introduces two characters, shows parts of their lives. Showing their happiness and their struggle. It shows someone dying which I find extremely intense for a television commercial. I don’t even think I have seen a television commercial that was three minutes long. This length gets a person wrapped up in the story. It’s done so well one could forget that they were even watching a commercial in the first place. It kind of shows people this could be their lives giving them a feeling of losing a loved one. The commercial was misleading and did hide what the goal was intended for it was for the whole commercial.

This video reinforces responses. Many people would agree that they would not want this to happen to someone that they love. This video just reaffirms that that is a terrible experience to go through. It reminds us that death still happens. This is something that we do not like and would like to prevent or at least reduce.

I have learned so much about influencing and how it is a part of various aspects of my life. I have learned how we are all influenced every day of our lives. I never really thought about why I had seen content, products or people in a certain way. It's just that it was my own free will to choose things that I like in my life. Some stuff is just presented to us in certain ways to get us to like it.

I knew about marketing. I didn’t realize that there is little to no detail left out when trying to sell a product. It almost because of a scary idea. I start to wonder how do companies know me so well or did they manufacture my opinions.

We are in by the media. This is what we consume as well as how we consume it. This is how products are presented to us to get us to want it without us thinking about why we want it.

There is influence the environment that we live in. Things are positioned in certain places. This is to get a certain outcome or reaction to it. I am more aware of the placing of things. Some of these are like food in a buffet. I am more aware and ask questions about why something is placed where it is. I also do this now at the grocery store.