Customer Reviews

The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do

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3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Who?
The first question is easy to answer. Clotaire Rapaille is a Frenchman who claims that a candy bar shared by a GI during the Liberation was a key imprint leading him to ultimately adopt the US as home. He holds a Masters in Political Science and in Psychology and a Doctorate in Medical Anthropology from the Sorbonne. As chairman of an organization called "Archetype Discoveries Worldwide" he shows how you too can become an archetypologist and learn the process of decoding culture. While he has taught at a long list of universities, he is better known as an advertising guru to top American corporations whom he helps discover the culture code that unlocks the door to successful marketing.

Why?
So why does he dress like Mozart? Perhaps because he uses a three movement orchestration that he calls "discovery" to penetrate to the heart of the social archetypes--to arrive at the code--the very deep "why" of human behavior, the trigger to an emotional response in the primitive brain that explains why people choose to do what they do and, especially of interest to his clientele, why they buy what they buy. The archetypal resonances of Mozart's The Golden Flute and the passion arousing sounds of Timotheus' lyre are what marketers and advertisers need to be "on code" or "off code" in ways that will essentially determine their success.

When the author explains that the culture code for US eating habits is FUEL, while the French focus on pleasure, it goes a long way toward explaining why, after close to a decade in France, I am schizophrenic. Eating in a US restaurant, the check arrives the moment I have stopped. It is delivered by an attendant in that very instant when I have set down my desert or coffee spoon indicating that my "tank is full." In France the check doesn't come until I wonder to what dalliance my waiter might have discretely gone off, and then grudgingly bestir myself from the delights of table talk to return to the practicalities of life.

Below are a few more of the US codes discussed in the book. While a number of other cultures come up in the discussion of the codes, I tease you with these few into finding the quite striking comparisons for yourself in its pages.

US Cultural Code
Automobile=Identity
Love=False expectation
Sex=Violence
Alcohol=Gun
Fat=Checking out
Young=Movement
Money=Proof

Archetypes or Stereotypes?
The codes are, of course, provocative, particularly to many USians in this case, because they correspond, not to how we rationalize our decisions,--what Rapaille calls our alibis--but how we are impelled toward them. Hence many of us are prone to shrug off if not aggressively attack any attempt at identifying or classifying us as "stereotyping." Why then are we at same time so attracted to simple models of classifying people such as MBTI, Belbin, EI, etc? For Rapaille I suspect that this seeming paradox would be resolved in the juxtaposition of the code word ADOLESCENCE that marks the US character as well as the US code for quality, which is, IT WORKS.

Before closing the author recounts his engagements with US corporations in search for the US culture code held by other national markets as well as their own codes and what is needed to mix and match in promoting US products abroad.

Out of the box
My purpose in this as in my other reviews is to search the significance of thinking for our intercultural field, which is tending to become fossilized in some of its classical research, models and theories of culture. The best books about culture that I read every year are generally not written by people who call themselves interculturalists but by people who lead me outside my box. Rapaille applies a Jungian archetype analysis based on such widely disparate sources as on his work with autistic children and his observation of successful brujos--these are not places where most of us spend our time.

In this respect, I found The Culture Code both affirming and tantalizing. It is affirming, because it is very much aligned with training in Jungian and Gestalt psychology that was a strong part of my education and because of my current work in the development of products in the Cultural Detective line that investigate core or key values of cultures as motives of behavior. His work also seems to confirm that the cultural stories we learn are not ingrained in us so much by their constant repetition but by their initial impact. The concept of Prägnanz generated in Gestalt psychology and Lakoff's understanding of semiotic imprinting support this and suggest that cultural codes as identified by Rapaille are more rooted in the physical and historical experience that interculturalists have tended to believe. Nature and Nurture may be more in cahoots with each other rather than the polarities we tend to make of them.

The Culture Code is also tantalizing, because it leaves me hungry for missing detail in Rapaille's process that I as a professional am eager to lay my hands on. This being said, the book itself brushes past me, being brilliantly "on code" for the US market, i.e., IT WORKS!-witness its stand on several bestseller lists.

My country, `tis of thee I sing...
The Culture Code ends in a paean that addresses Rapaille's principles of discovery to AMERICA, that larger than life DREAM that the US has of itself--perhaps a code word in its own right. Like many immigrants before him, AMERICA is obviously the author's Promised Land. It is a land that ever looks to a MOSES to lead it and, when needed, regenerate its spirit of "never growing up" and "never giving up," above all never yielding to the crime of pessimism. Of course confrontation with the shadow, as Jung would put it, is locked in each of the culture codes for the USA as in those of all other lands, but on these shores, woe to him who turns that key.

Having marketed and sold in every region of the globe, I was naturally drawn to Clotaire Rapaille's "The Culture Code." Rapaille utlizes a one word "code word" which you could characterize an "emoticon descriptor" for a product or service, such as "HORSE" for the the Jeep Wrangler, or "DISAPPOINTMENT" for Love. He caught my interest up front with an overview of the process behind his code labeling, but as the book progressed, never provided a road map as to the analysis behind the process except the end results surrounding vanity areas of health, beauty, sex, home, money and other emotional areas. But nothing regarding hard business analysis. His premise is that we all look at the world differently due to our childhood driven, hard wired cultural experiences, causing stark differences between the emotional quotient of Europeans, Asians and Americans. At the end, the chapters were fairly repetitive recapping the first, and strongest in the book.

This is a brilliant book! It is extremely well written, incredibly interesting and tremendously insightful. I bought it after reading a page at random and was hooked.

In "The Culture Code" Frenchman turned American, Clotaire Rapaille, an expert on culture coding and adviser to many of the world's largest and most successful companies, unlocks the secrets to understanding why people in America, Europe and Asia live and buy as they do. Everything centers around how each nation sees itself and others, especially America. These codes are important to companies trying to sell their goods and ideas abroad. But they also reveal a great deal about us.

The French code for France, for example is Idea, while the code for America is Space Travelers. The German code for Germany is Order, while that for America is John Wayne. The English code for England is Class, while that for America is Unashamedly Abundant. And the American code for America is Dream.

"Dreams have driven this culture from its earliest days," writes Dr. Rapaille, with a beauty and passion that lends much to his French roots. "The dream of explorers discovering the New World. The dream of pioneers opening the West. The dream of Founding Fathers imagining a new form of union. The dream of entrepreneurs forging the Industrial Revolution. The dream of immigrants coming to a land of hope. The dream of a new group of explorers landing safely on the moon."

Rapaille shows that, while the Europeans fail to understand Americans and many even hope we will fail in the future, they admire our country and Americans for our boundless sense of youth, energy and hope.

Rapaille, who arrived in this country penniless, due to a French law which froze the assets of any France citizen leaving the country, is clearly very much in love with his adopted country and has become more American than many born here, for he has pursued his dreams and prospered. His ideas and inspiring writing style certainly reflect this. But the author is unduly harsh toward his country of birth and the Europeans in general.

Having lived in Europe and traveled throughout the continent for almost eleven years, I very much value and appreciate the culture of my French, German, and Dutch friends and neighbors. Yes, we live our lives by different codes, but in the end we are really not as different as Dr. Rapaille would have us believe. We all desire a better life for ourselves and, especially, our children. We all worry about a growing trend toward conflict in the world and insecurity at home. And we all dream of a better world. Indeed, we are witnessing both the convergence and clash of culture codes.

"The Culture Code" is packed with ideas that will benefit everyone from the average American, to the businessman, to the politician. It is truly an insightful and uplifting journey.

Seeing the number of strong reviews, I bought this book expecting deep insight into how consumers across cultures differ in how they make buying decisions (as indicated by the subtitle). At the very least, I was hoping for a thought-provoking framework for thinking about this stuff.

Instead, I got surface-level assertions primarily targeted at the American psyche and seemingly supported only by casual observation and a few focus groups. Indeed, the lack of real scientific rigor and foundational theory supporting his words make it pretty easy to blow holes in every one of Rapaille's arguments (especially the ideas of the Reptilian Brain and America's Cultural Adolescence) and make the book frustrating to read. Like some other reviewers, I also nearly put it down after 100 pages.

On the other hand, the Codes that he's defined for Americans' views of things like food, quality, health, and money are reasonable enough. So to some foreign audiences and perhaps also to Americans and Marketers without previous exposure to cultural anthropology, I can understand how some of his ideas may seem profound.

If you don't fit into either of those categories, don't bother buying this book.

Clotaire Rapaille reminds me a little of a somewhat softened, better educated and French version of the Jack Nicholson character in that pivotal moment of "A Few Good Men" where he blurts out: "You can't handle the truth!"

The author is confrontive in the extreme, but in an intellectually assertive and nonviolent way. He has truly mined some of the cloaked messages going on as endless tape loops in the unconscious minds of individuals and their national cultures - especially, but not exclusively, Americans.

I smiled knowingly when I read the Publisher's Weekly review at the top of this page. The reviewer roundly attacks the author for the statement about Japanese men and romance. I live in San Francisco and I have dated a number of Japanese women from Japan. I would have to say based on my experience that it is the PW reviewer who is looking at life through the preposterous prism of a Hollywood lens, and it is Dr. Rapaille who is right in touch with street-level reality.

The book's subtitle overpromises a little (as subtitles are wont to do) in that this book won't give you an entirely new world view from which to understand everything about everybody. It won't.

But the number of stunning insights (all of which resonated with me, as an experienced marketer) about: sex... seduction... men's view of women... money... food... alcohol... beauty... and being fat...

... will cause the thoughtful, inquiring and willing-to-learn reader to see things in a new way and understand parts of his world a lot better.

This is a great book and well worth reading if you are interested in psychology, marketing, and/or the world the way it is and the way it is likely to be for years to come.

Though the Culture Code truly is a valuable tool, and Rapaille presents us with several important insights, this book is ultimately a failure. Rapaille's attempts to extrapolate on his "Culture Code" to draw broader conclusions about human behavior become extreme generalizations. In a few careless sentences Rapaille manages astounding cognative acrobatics that leave his processes, and thus his conclusions, utterly unscientific and unreliable. Not a single citation (in all his talk of the "reptilian brain" never does he cite a single scholar of evolutionary psychology), laughably weak premises (the United States of America is in it's "adolescent stage" because of the relative age of the country? ok there might be SOME value in that framework, but Rapaille takes it beyond beyond....its just silly), and a predictably limited scope of research (USA, England, France, tiny bits about Germany, Italy and Japan.......since we are generalizing about the behavior of all human societies here, maybe devote a little time to the other five sixths of the planet?), render The Culture Code basically a waste of time. Skim through it for the bolded words (the "Codes"), read the following paragraph, and you have basically derived all worthwhile information from this book that couldn't be gleaned from another well researched, academically responsible, insightful and historically accurate souce.

I love this book.

Whether you are a marketer that wants to sell more or a consumer that wants to understand why you buy, this is the book for you.

I was worried at first that this book might be another one of those "psycho-advertising" books that just repackage Maslow's hierarchy or Jung's Archetypes but nothing could be further from the truth. This is a breakthrough exploration of the cultural imprints that govern our buying decisions. This work is new, fresh and very timely.

Rapaille begins his work by studying the work of Scientist Henri Laborit and carrying his work related to learning and emotion forward into advertising today. Rapaille demonstrates very clearly how cultural imprints guide our most base impressions, ideas and ideals around products we purchase. His case studies with the largest companies in the world quickly validate the information that he shares in the book.

The author lays out a five step process for eliciting imprints while clearly and convincingly demonstrating the translation of our imprints into codes that anyone can use in their ability to persuade, sell or market their goods.

This book is a must read for anyone serious about sales, marketing or advertising. In addition, I really enjoyed Rapaille's exploration of the brain and how it processes imprints and codes in relationship to buying.

Dave Lakhani
Author of Persuasion: The Art Of Getting What You Want
[...]

Nice stories, good observations, simplistic exposés and bold statements... but dubious generalizations.

This book fails to satisfy the very basic rules of logic. One can propose a generalization of a phenomenon based on unique observations and, depending upon which school of epistemology you belong to, either treat it as a hypothesis that must yet be proven, or adopt it as theory until it is proven wrong (i.e., falsified). But in either case, the existence of a counterexample will shatter the claim. If you are willing to read Rapaille's book from a critical thinking perspective, you will find a counterexample to his theories on almost every page.

I totally endorse Publishers Weekly's review: "preposterous generalizations and overstatements".

This does not discount the book's value as fantasy novel and "feel-good" reading.

I went into this book expecting a well-researched comparison of different cultures and how those differences affect how products are perceived and marketed. In the end, I was short-changed. The "research" is largely absent and is presented as anecdotal impressions from survey participants that don't hold consistent themes. Unfortunately, Rapaille chooses to make sweeping generalizations about these results, always trying to distill the entire spectrum of participant responses into single catch phrases. But if he couldn't do that, he wouldn't have a book, would he?

Further, he overemphasizes the American point of view far too much, and provides too little on other non-American cultures.

Save your money and check it out from the library if you're remotely interested.

I found this book fascinating (couldn't put it down) but also lightweight and quick to read. You get the sense that each of the Codes was originally presented in a broader way to his corporate clients, with more context, probably some alternative explanations, typical alibis and rationalizations, ambiguities.

The two interesting aspects were the fresh overview of American culture and tidbits about European cultures (France, Germany, Italy). The book ties a number of ideas and concepts I'd only half-considered, like the code for quality being IT WORKS (e.g., good-enough versus near-perfect or long-lasting). While the author states that the results are non-regional, in this case further discussion of whether the concept persists across economic classes and regions (the coasts versus middle America) would have filled out the explanations.

The book is worth reading through once. Looking over a list of the keywords and codes, there's minimal reason to reread it. The sections on love, seduction, sex, alcohol, and maybe youth and beauty, are the most insightful; the rest seem straightforward.