Who is the subject of this ad? Why, you are, of course. Guess what -- I've just "appellated" you. Exactly like this ad does. Ads hail us -- they call out "hey you."
Sometimes this process of hailing the viewer is explicit like in this ad which names their product You just to make sure the viewer draws an equivalence between themselves and the product. More often, the process of appellation is a bit more subtle, sometimes even implicit in the structure of the ad.
To explain appellation, I need to construct a concrete picture of how the process works. The ad is like a window. The woman (the model) on the other side of the window stands in her pose, waiting for a viewer to step into the imaginary "appellation box" in front of the ad. What I mean by this term is the figurative space in front of the ad into which to viewer plugs her/himself when s/he turns the page in the magazine and looks into the window. Once inside, s/he makes her/himself the subject of the ad or elects not to. Fill the gap.
How exactly does this happen? There are quite a few elements involved in the process. First, we have been trained within our media-based society that it's okay for an ad to use the word "you." If you really stop to consider this fact, which seems to be obvious because we have all processed so many ads that we take interpellation for granted, the quality of obviousness disappears. The ad was written by somebody who has never met you personally. The picture is of a woman who neither knows nor probably cares who looks at this ad. But we don't think of these things. We've been trained to approach an ad in much the same way we would approach a conversation. When we see the word "you" in an ad, we react to it just like we don when we are having a conversation with a close friend. We change it into "I."
So you open your magazine to this ad and you are thumbing through the pages, and there you see a jockish woman and you place her as such. Then, regardless of whether you yourself are a jock or not, you lift your eyes to the copy, which interpellates you: "You don't get this far by accident." Within your head, "you" becomes "I." You realize that there is now a relationship between yourself and this woman. The words really have two meanings -- the one that comes to mean "you" and another that means the woman in the picture. This woman has a socially appreciated body, and she didn't get that far by accident. But although she is held up as an example of the truth of the copy, you, as viewer, are the subject of the ad.
"You've kicked, danced, stretched and muscled your way through every class." Now for those of you who have also done this, you can smile, remembering how you've sweated, the aching muscles, and the ever-decreasing numbers on the scale. That's one way to plug yourself in as the subject of this ad. But for those of you who haven't been exercising, you should be feeling a twinge of guilt by the time you get to the end of the first paragraph. You should be asking yourself, "Why haven't I (transformed from the "you" of a second ago) been kicking, dancing and sweating?"
This is an interesting effect within this ad. There are two "appellation boxes", I think -- one for the already physically fit, and another for the still-out-of-shape. So you read the first paragraph, and either form a line to the right or the left. But in both cases, you are still able to read yourself in as the subject. Pretty tricky.
Then, "You've worked hard, and so have we." Isn't it funny that a big manufacturer can know these things about you? Not only does this company know about your personal struggle for physical fitness, but they empathize with your hardship as well. They even put themselves on the same level as you. You've worked hard. So have they. And who were they working for? "Avia® aerobic shoes are biomechanically designed (a pseudo-medical term designed to impress you and flatter your intelligence) to reduce injury (to you). They help prevent sore arches, calves, shin splints or twisted ankles from ever holding you back." A huge faceless company becomes a more personal, caring "we" speak to you as an individual company. This is also pretty tricky. In reality, the company neither knows you or probably really cares about you as an individual. Also, when the advertiser wrote this ad, they certainly didn't have your face in mind, but rather the abstract idea of the consumer(s). They wrote the "you" to address every single person who sees this ad, yet the viewer is able to transform her/himself into the subject. That is, after all, the way you're supposed to make sense of an ad. Readers of advertisements may be the largest body of trained, unpaid workers in the world, with the possible exception of housewives.
"To get the most out of your body, wear Avia." Avia here is no longer just a tennis shoe. It has been abstracted into the force that controls your body shape. A beautiful body no longer comes from "kicking, dancing, stretching and sweating," but rather through Avia shoes. Or, to take this one step further, Avia shoes come to mean the same as a beautiful body. You, subject out there in front of this ad, can buy a beautiful body in a box at your nearest shoe store. That's the big message this ad wants to send home. We know what you want "you" to be, and we can still sell it to you.
Rae French