I recently finished reading, and when I say reading I mean listening, to a fascinating book called The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do.
The author is a marketing consultant and psychoanalyst named Clotaire Rapaille. He’s French, but he’s lived in the U.S. for over half his life (which makes many of his viewpoints interesting in and of themselves). The book is about how a nation’s history and cultural mythology become psychological templates (culture codes) to which citizens respond unconsciously.
For Rapaille, unlocking these codes has meant big bucks marketing commercial products. For example, in America, the culture code for Jeep is “horse,” because it has strong ties to ideas of going anywhere in any terrain. However in Germany and France people associate jeeps with WWII and the liberation of Europe. Hence Chrysler marketed Jeeps in Europe as symbols of freedom. Apparently with great success.
I’m going to include an excerpt from the book about the marketing of coffee in Japan. Rapaille was hired by Nestle and was, of course, faced with the challenge of a thousands-year-old tea culture. This five minute exerpt unfolds kind of like a H.P. Lovecraft story. It’s not quite horrific, but the plan that Rapaille eventually devises kind of devious. Even manipulative. But especially if you’ve lived in Japan or in Asia, you’ll know just how spot on he was.
Five Minutes of The Culture Code
I highly recommend this book.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Westbaystars // Dec 5, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Well, that explains the creation of coffee-jelly (Jell-o) in deserts (often parfaits). Not being a coffee drinker, I cringe every time I got one of those. My imprint of coffee is about as negative as my imprint of beer. I just can’t bring myself to drink either.
2 Shinsano // Dec 6, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I love coffee, but I’ve never liked coffee flavored ice cream, candy, what have you. But in Korea it’s everywhere. Now I know why. In fact, Nestle brand ice creams are pretty popular here.
3 yoshi // Dec 10, 2008 at 3:13 am
EWC BOOK CLUB!!!!
on the topic of good reads. just finished a book (nothing related to THE CULTURE CODE-my apologies) titled THE SPIRIT CATCHES YOU AND YOU FALL DOWN- a hmong child, her american doctors, and the collision of two cultures. the jist of the book is about the hmong migration to america and the problems they deal with trying to “fit it” to american culture. in particular it deals with a hmong child with epilepsy and how the american doctors turned her into a vegetable. the catch is this: if the family were to have stayed in LAOS, the child would have perished at a much earlier age. basically, american medicine had prolonged her life at the same time compromised it.
4 yoshi // Dec 10, 2008 at 3:16 am
i also stumbled onto another short read called BASEBALL MAGIC written by George Gmelch.
the article comes up if you google it. its short yet interesting. it talks of certain rituals or “baseball magic” players go through in order to keep winning and playing well. check it out.
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