Review By D.W.

The Culture Code, written by a French-American psychiatrist cum marketing guru is a brilliant book about understanding how to decipher the shared cultural meanings. The primary message of the book is that all cultures are different and have developed different meanings to same thing or concept. These subconscious cultural understandings are known as culture codes. These codes are common to a particular culture and are developed as a result of cultural experiences by a given society.

The key to cracking a culture code is to understand what common emotions are connected with a certain object. When Dr. Rapaille attempts to discover what a culture code is, he explores people’s emotional attitude towards an object or concept. He describes focus groups as being worthless because people will say all sorts of things that make them sound smart or what they think the hosts want them to say. When emotional perspectives are explored, people will reveal how the object makes them feel and what memories are attached to it and this is more truthful.
 

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For instance, the American code for a car is identity as Americans for the past couple of generations have found strong emotions of independence in the automobile. American’s want cars that express their identity and that are sensual and attractive. Some Americans have had their first sexual encounters in a car and they have deep meanings of sexual exploration associated with the car. This is not the case in other cultures that have developed a different meaning for cars.

Dr. Rapaille describes his first venture into marketing when Nestle hired him in the early 1970’s to understand what the Japanese thought about coffee, which they were having trouble selling. He discovered that the Japanese had no developed cultural meaning for coffee because they had no emotional connection to it. Thus, he recommended that Nestle attempt to develop a cultural meaning for. The company then created coffee flavored candy for Japanese children and now the Japanese drink lots of coffee because they associate the taste with the pleasure of the candies they ate as children.

Marketing is the primary discipline of the book and he focuses on how to discover the culture code in order to sell products. However, understanding the collective cultural meanings of a society is important for many other disciplines including politics and diplomacy.

Dr. Rapaille also describes American culture as an adolescent culture because it is so relatively new. In many ways this is good and works to our benefit and it is negative in some ways too. He states the American culture displays many traits of an adolescent, with an intense focus on the “now”, fascination with extremes, desire for change and reinvention, and a constant need to challenge authority. Americans view life and the world with an adolescent’s fervor and optimism, like a teenage boy, America is indestructible.

This adolescent culture is obvious in the ways we idolize and worship stupid celebrities who act like teenagers well into their adulthood. They constantly make the same childish mistakes and have marriages that last as long as a middle school courtship and we repeatedly forgive them. Now, this doesn’t describe my attitude about them and maybe not yours as well. However, let’s be honest, a lot of American’s do think this way and many people are fascinated by these brainless Hollywood idiots.

Rapaille also describes the adolescent nature of American politics. He states the following about Bill Clinton:

“Bill Clinton was a political genius, not for his understanding of world problems, but for his ability to resonate with the American cultural unconscious. Clinton was the perfect adolescent president. Fantastic material for the stand-up comedian: cheating, lying under oath, a sex scandal - the whole package was perfect.”

Yet, Bill Clinton, like his counterparts in Hollywood was able to constantly rise from the ashes of teenage shame and remain a celebrity. Many Americans loved Bill Clinton not because he was a good president but because he was a rock star. If you think about it, Dr. Rapaille is on to something here.

The greatness of American culture is the constant and unmitigated desire to grow and develop, to reinvent ourselves. Many foreigners have predicted the downfall of America throughout history but were wrong because they failed to understand American culture. Whenever Americans hit upon hard times and America seems to be in decline, we just get right back up again and go at it. We consistently end up stronger than we were before and the world is amazed at our resilience.

Other countries have developed culture codes for the United States and it affects how they perceive us and our products. France for instance had the culture code of “Space Explorers” for the U.S. and they see us a being not really human. The French code for France is “Idea” and they see themselves as being brilliant and they have a mission to share their brilliance with others to enlighten the world. Now French ideas aren’t very brilliant but they certainly believe it and it affects how they interact with America and the world.

However, they are thinkers and American’s are doers and America’s perpetual dominance astounds them. They wonder how an inferior culture could accomplish so much more than they can. Therefore, the French perceive Americans as having some other worldly qualities. When American companies market in France their products need to have a strange new outer space look because they associate America with space exploration.

The Culture Code is a fascinating book well worth reading for some insight into culture and how it is developed. He covers a wide range of topics from love and sex, to health, food, money, luxury and work. Despite being French, he is critical of France and other Europeans as well as America. One thing that he doesn’t cover in his book that he should have is the Chinese and Arab cultures which I am very curious about.

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