How do you feel when big corporations address you directly? (In other words, when they use the second-person pronoun “you” in their communications.) Do you feel like you’re valued? That you’re being treated as an individual? Or does it make you want to grab their CEO by the scruff of the neck and tell them to shut up?
It’s impossible nowadays to buy food, walk down the street or even open your emails without businesses trying to chat you up. A carton of Alpro oat milk shouts “Hey you!” from the dairy aisle. A restaurant you visited once sends a circular with “We miss you!” in the subject line. You get a bill from Octopus Energy with 41 uses of this cursed pronoun, but it never once addresses you with “Dear”.
This technique, known as direct address, isn’t new. In 1888, Kodak were selling cameras with the slogan: “You push the button, we do the rest.” But it feels like it has been gaining ground recently, so much so that this hill on which I would gladly die sometimes feels a lonely one.
A recent study showed that most consumers respond better to adverts that address them directly. But to me, it just feels disingenuous. Take the Kodak slogan: at the time, photography was a specialised profession. The first Kodak camera was simple enough for anyone to use. The slogan’s direct address reinforces this, giving the reader a false sense of power that still feels patronising 137 years later.
Because, as with smartphones today, the real power lies with the device itself, not to mention the company that is profiting from it. It’s one thing to sell me a product, quite another to con me into feeling self-actualised for simply pressing a button. In the more formal world of the 1880s, direct address must have felt bold, perhaps a little transgressive. But now it has become the default style of the ruling class. “Good to see you, Max,” chirps ChatGPT on the rare occasions I log on to it. Someday, this machine may take my job and reduce me to beggary. Given this, it could at least call me “sir”.
Max Fletcher is a London-based writer
