The Code Breaker

 
Why do we do what we do? Psychoanalyst Clotaire Rapaille breaks cultural codes for global corporations and thus gives them the key to culture-specific buyer behaviour. Rapaille spoke with Stefan Kaiser, Editor-in-Chief of GDI Impuls*. The following is an abridged version of the interview in GDI Impuls, Winter 2006.
 
He was a psychoanalyst working with autistic children when he was approached by Nestlé managers and asked to place his expertise at the company’s disposal. The Swiss food company was facing a particularly difficult problem: the Japanese did not want to drink Nescafe. On the basis of his conclusions for this job, Clotaire Rapaille began his life’s work – the search for codes and psychological patterns hidden within the unconscious of every culture.
 
Over the last 30 years, Rapaille has refined his method for discovering cultural codes. Since then, he has worked as a ‘code breaker’ and helped more than half of the ‘Fortune 100’ companies find the way to the subconscious of their target groups. Anyone who knows the codes knows why people do what they do and holds a key to culture-specific shopping behaviour. The culture code is the significance we unconsciously attach to a given matter. It imprints itself on our mind via the culture in which we grow up: American, French and German consumers have differing experiences and expectations of products. As with the psychoanalysis of individuals, the ‘cultural unconscious’ can be decoded using the mental imprints that influence our thoughts and actions. Differences in the cultural environment in which a person grows up result in differences in the way he or she processes a given piece of information because their minds use different cultural ‘systems of references’.
 
Despite spending billions of dollars, American companies failed completely when they tried to introduce Japanese standards of quality at the end of the eighties. “Of course,” says Rapaille, “because quality is something less exalted for the Americans than for the Japanese, they do not demand the same degree of perfection as a society that must make do with very little space. They are happy when something simply works.” The USA is an ‘adolescent’ culture that wants to learn from its own mistakes: a nation of immigrants who lived by trial and error – survival without a book of instructions.
 
Efficiency is decisive for the Japanese. In their country, there is no room for useless products and processes. Quality is vital. Americans, on the other hand, find perfection boring. Their cultural code calls for things that become obsolete because that gives them a reason to buy something new. A product is not supposed to be perfect. Instead of perfection, they prefer good customer service.
 
The Japanese reaction to Nescafe is nothing unusual. Other countries react just as negatively to concepts that are incompatible with their culture. Rapaille’s tip: “If you want to introduce something new to a culture, it must be adapted to fit in with that culture. Vice versa simply doesn’t work.” To discover how a culture functions, the market anthropologist studies our early mental imprints. This system of references contains all meanings and emotions that determine our behaviour as consumers.
 
Other psychiatrists put individuals on the couch to help them. You do the same with whole nations. What does this yield?
Rapaille: Market assessments. If you want to sell cars to the Americans or food to the Germans, you must understand the system of references that these people use. Wal-Mart failed in Germany because they didn’t understand how the Germans shop. #Zu#
 

 
So do Germans shop differently to Americans?
Rapaille: Yes. An important prerequisite for success in a market is an understanding of its cultural code. Naturally, I do not want to say that all Germans or all Americans are the same. However, they share a common system of cultural references. Anyone who understands this system, in other words, anyone who has broken the code, will be almost automatically successful. #Zu#
 

 
What are the characteristics of this system of reference?
Rapaille: Let me give you an example. Tothe best of my knowledge, no American has ever committed suicide by disembowelling himself with a kitchen knife. In the USA, there is no system of reference for committing suicide in this way. In Japan, however, it is quite common. A group of bankrupt bankers recently committed collective suicide in this way in a motel. This is the subject of my research: which things are exclusive to a given culture? In this connection, it is interesting to note that reference systems can remain unchanged for centuries.
 
Please click here for the full article

 
*GDI Impuls, the renowned information magazine for business and society published by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute, an independent Swiss think tank, provides an authoritative overview of the latest trends and important developments in trade and industry.
 
www.gdiimpuls.ch
 

 
| 1 November 2007 |