Rapaille, Clotaire

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Rapaille, Clotaire

PERSONAL:

Male.

CAREER:

Writer, business consultant, entrepreneur, marketing expert, cultural anthropologist, psychoanalyst, and child psychiatrist. Owner of businesses focusing on business and marketing.

WRITINGS:

The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People around the World Buy and Live as They Do, Broadway Books (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Clotaire Rapaille is an author, psychiatrist, and business consultant who has worked for industry leaders such as Folgers, Chrysler, and others. Rapaille's research into the cultural meanings of certain words, images, and codes led to his book The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People around the World Buy and Live as They Do. In an interview on the Persuaders Web site, Rapaille explained that the first time someone learns a word or concept is critical. "The first time you understand, you imprint the meaning of this word; you create a mental connection that you're going to keep using the rest of your life," Rapaille said. "And to create this mental connection, you need some emotions. Without emotion, there is no production of neurotransmitters in the brain, and you don't create the connection. So actually every word has a mental highway. I call that a code, an unconscious code in the brain."

These emotional connections create the codes, the fundamental meanings, that words will have for a person throughout their entire life. The codes differ based on the context and culture in which they are learned and in which one lives. A particular word, concept, or code may mean one thing in France, another in England, and yet another in the United States. Knowing how these codes and concepts are interpreted, and what emotional responses they trigger, whether consciously or unconsciously, is key to Rapaille's approach to market research and creation of advertising. Rapaille believes that reactions to these codes come from what he calls the "reptilian" segment of the human brain, the portion of the cerebral cortex that contains the human's basic survival instincts and responses. To effectively trigger a response from the reptilian brain, an appeal must be made directly to the emotions. Advertising and marketing that makes this type of emotional appeal, addressing the cultural codes and the emotional brain specifically, will inevitably be successful.

The Culture Code explores the manifold landscapes of the cultural codes that drive people's emotional and intellectual perceptions, and how those codes differ around the world. Rapaille offers advice for businesses and marketers who seek to craft their advertising messages to take best advantage of those codes in their various contexts. In his research, Rapaille found that in America, the cultural code for Jeep is Horse—a mode of transportation. In France and Germany, however, the code amounts to Liberator, which necessitated different marketing strategies for the U.S. and Europe. David Wallace-Wells, writing in the Washington Monthly, called Rapaille's book a "gregarious, ruminative professional memoir, offering here and there real insight into the character of our frenetic consumer culture."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2006, review of The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People around the World Buy and Live as They Do, p. 397.

Library Journal, May 1, 2006, Elizabeth L. Winter, review of The Culture Code, p. 109.

Publishers Weekly, May 1, 2006, review of The Culture Code, p. 53.

Reference & Research Book News, November, 2006, review of The Culture Code.

Washington Monthly, July-August, 2006, David Wallace-Wells, "Analyze This: How Culture Shapes Our Inner Shopper," review of The Culture Code, p. 48.