Customer Reviews

7 Secrets of Marketing in a Multi-Cultural World

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As I read this excellent book, I was reminded of what Whitman once asserted: "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes." If each human being is "large" and "contains multitudes", how difficult (if not impossible) it would be to grasp the nature and extent of the diversity within cultures such as families, communities, cities, and countries. In the Foreword, Rapaille addresses his reader directly: "This book gives you a new set of glasses to look at the way you -- and the rest of the world -- buy and sell, live and function. Just as using the microscope to see microbes changed the way we practice medicine, and breaking the code of the hieroglyphics suddenly gave us access to the incredible amount of information hidden for centuries, archetypology -- the new science of decoding cultures -- is changing the way we look at ourselves, at others, and at organizations." Here are his seven "Secrets":

1. The structure is the message: people don't buy products and services -- they buy relationships.

2. Cultures have an unconscious: cultural archetypes have the power to make or break any marketing, sales, or public relations plan.

3. Those who don't know the "code" can't open the "door": decoding the mindset of the target market opens doors of opportunity.

4. Time, space, and energy are the building blocks of all cultures: each culture has a DNA which means that any organization can encode its culture for superior marketing and sales performance.

5. Solve the right problem: Each organization must design and create new products or services to solve the right customer problems.

6. The more global, the more local: Quality is the passport to global markets, but the code for quality differs from culture to culture, market to market, person to person.

7. The Third World War is underway -- and it is cultural: cultural awareness is the key to success and to personal and collective freedom.

For whom will this book be most valuable? First, decision-makers in global organizations. Also, others who suspect that certain widely-accepted assumptions about "culture" (however defined) are either inadequate or flat-out wrong. Of greatest interest to me are those sections in which Rapaille explains how to "decode" a culture. What he calls "unconscious cultural forces" must be understood or a "cultural World War III" will be inevitable, if it is not already underway. (He thinks it is.) Those who you have read Daniel Goleman's Working with Emotional Intelligence will be especially interested in what Rapaille has to say about emotional imprints, emotional experiences, and the correlations between and among them. As archetype shifts occur, paradigm shifts seem certain to follow.

Throughout the book, Rapaille devotes substantial attention to examining culural realities (and their implications) in terms of their relevance to business in general, and to marketing and sales in particular. At one point he observes: "Today's high-speed changes are not as chaotic or as random as we are led to believe. There are not only distinct patterns to be found in culturally specific behaviors and attitudes, but also identifiable forces that shape members of these societies. Once we understand these forces and the way they are organized, we can deal with them strategically." Perhaps he agrees with Peter Drucker's opinion that man's greatest challenge is to manage a future which has already occurred. Rapaille's is a significant contribution to our understanding of cultural "multitudes" even as so many have yet to be revealed.

I have lived in several different countries throughout the world in sales, marketing and ommunications positions. G. Clotaire Rapaille has been able to bring this down to words. Wal-Mart made one of the biggest mistakes when going abroad and expanding to Europe. In Germany Wal-Mart was met with strong resistance from labor unions to consumer organizations. They lost in a very big way. Just being American and the American "Can do" mentality was not enough. The executives should have opened their minds and soul to other ways of thinking and understanding their target audience.

G. Clotaire Rapaille explains in this book how to decode the CNA (Cultural DNA) which influences the way people of a particular country or area buy.
If you are involved in international sales, marketing or communication in any way read this book before you take on the task of introducing some new product or advertising campaign to a specific country other than your own.

An example of reality. A well known Swiss department store decided to use an english language slogan, "come in and find out" well a great number of people interpreted this to mean "come in but please leave". This was a flop. They executives as well as the ad agency were at fault. They used research based on English speaking audiences and not in the home market.

Read, reflect and understand this book.

I enjoyed this fresh take on marketing. Definitely worth the money and time to read.