Exercise #3: According to Epstein "Appealing to fear is a way politicians and advertisers manipulate people" by making them feel scared of the consequences they may face if they do not follow the advertiser's advice or directions.
An example of this are the recent commercials for All State Insurance. They are a series of commercials starring the same actor. The actor poses as the dangers every car owner may face. In one commercial he pretends to be a teenage girl driving a big pink truck in what seems to be a parking lot of a shopping mall. The teenage girl is on the phone with a friend and finds out that a boy she likes kissed her friend. This makes her emotionally distraught and so the actor dramatizes this situation and drives the pink truck into a parked car. He then explains that with cut-rate insurance the owner of the parked car will have to pay for the damages themselves because they are not covered. All State will cover these kinds of accidents and apparently any other kind of damages.
This is an example of appealing to fear because people watching the commercial will realize that this could happen to them and their insurance will probably not cover the damages. They will be scared by the fact that they will have to pay thousands of dollars in damages for an accident they had nothing to do with. Because of these fears and worries they will switch to All State and feel at ease.
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