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The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille

The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille

by Parker · 188 things on Twos

An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Buy and Live As They Do
Introduction
When I put groups of consumers together, I asked them different questions. I didn’t ask them what they wanted in a Jeep; I asked them to tell me about their earliest memories of Jeeps. Respondents told me hundreds of stories, and the stories had a strong recurring image—of being out on the open land, of going where no ordinary car could go, of riding free of the restraints of the road. Many people spoke of the American West or the open plains.
I returned to those wary Chrysler executives and told them that the Code for Jeep in America is HORSE. Their notion of turning the Wrangler into just another SUV was ill advised. SUVs are not horses. Horses don’t have luxury appointments. Horses don’t have butter-soft leather, but rather the tough leather of a saddle. The Wrangler needed to have removable doors and an open top because drivers wanted to feel the wind around them, as though they were riding on a horse.
Respondents in both France and Germany saw Wranglers as reminiscent of the Jeeps American troops drove during World War II. For the French, this was the image of freedom from the Germans. For the Germans, this was the image of freedom from their darker selves. Repeatedly, the people in these countries told me stories about how the image of a Jeep gave them a sense of hope, reminding them of the end of difficult times and the dawn of better days. I returned to Chrysler and told them that the Code for the Jeep Wrangler in both countries was LIBERATOR.
The Culture Code for toilet paper is INDEPENDENCE. “The child can now close the bathroom door, maybe even lock it, and reject his parents. And, amazingly, he will be praised for doing so. His parents are proud of him for not needing them anymore. They smile and applaud him. Sometimes they even buy him presents. For American parents, toilet training has significant social consequences: it affects everything from playdates to car trips to acceptance in preschool. There is also, of course, the stirring sense of liberation that comes when mothers and fathers realize they no longer need to change diapers. “It is only after the child is adept at using toilet paper that she can be free behind the bathroom door. Free, and without guilt, since she has the full endorsement of the authority figures in her life.
For Ritz-Carlton, this meant a huge opportunity to cater to their guests in the one room of the house (or suite) that signifies complete privacy and independence. Why not have a phone in the bathroom? A notepad and pen to take notes? Why stop there—why not make the bathroom comfortable, spacious, and independent of the hotel suite? Merely functional, a bathroom is forgettable. A bathroom that is a fully equipped and independent retreat from the world, however, is right on Code.
The Culture Code is the unconscious meaning we apply to any given thing—a car, a type of food, a relationship, even a country—via the culture in which we are raised. The American experience with Jeeps is very different from the French and German experience because our cultures evolved differently (we have strong cultural memories of the open frontier; the French and Germans have strong cultural memories of occupation and war). Therefore, the Codes—the meanings we give to the Jeep at an unconscious level—are different as well. The reasons for this are numerous, but it all comes down to the worlds in which we grew up. It is obvious to everyone that cultures are different from one another. What most people don’t realize, however, is that these differences actually lead to our processing the same information in different ways.
Henri Laborit drew a clear connection between learning and emotion, showing that without the latter the former was impossible. The stronger the emotion, the more clearly an experience is learned.
The combination of the experience and its accompanying emotion creates something known widely as an imprint, a term first applied by Konrad Lorenz. Once an imprint occurs, it strongly conditions our thought processes and shapes our future actions. Each imprint helps make us more of who we are. The combination of imprints defines us.
Coffee could not compete with tea in the Japanese culture if it had such weak emotional resonance. Instead, if Nestlé was going to have any success in this market at all, they needed to start at the beginning. They needed to give the product meaning in this culture. They needed to create an imprint for coffee for the Japanese. Armed with this information, Nestlé devised a new strategy. Rather than selling instant coffee to a country dedicated to tea, they created desserts for children infused with the flavor of coffee but without the caffeine. The younger generation embraced these desserts. Their first imprint of coffee was a very positive one, one they would carry throughout their lives. Through this, Nestlé gained a meaningful foothold in the Japanese market. While no marketer will likely ever be able to convince the Japanese to abandon tea, coffee sales—nearly nonexistent in 1970—now approach half a billion pounds per year in Japan.
Early imprinting has a tremendous impact on why people do what they do.
“The sun” in French is le soleil, a masculine noun, and, for the French, a word closely associated with the Sun King, Louis XIV. The French, who imprint this reference at a young age, perceive the sun as male and, by extension, see males as brilliant and shining. Women, on the other hand, are associated with the moon, la lune, a feminine word. The moon, of course, does not shine by herself; she reflects the light of the sun. We can learn much about the relationship between French men and French women through this observation and the understanding of how French children receive the imprint of these terms. For Germans, however, these words have nearly opposite meanings. The sun, die Sonne, is feminine, and Germans believe that women are the ones who bring warmth to the world, make things grow, and raise children. German men are the night, the dark, the moon side. Der Mond, “the moon,” is a masculine term. Again, this speaks volumes about the relationships the genders have to each other in this culture and the roles they play in this society.
Chapter 1: The Birth of a Notion
Principle 1: You can't believe what people say
When asked direct questions about their interests and preferences, people tend to give answers they believe the questioner wants to hear.
People respond to these questions with their cortexes, the parts of their brains that control intelligence rather than emotion or instinct.
Most people don’t know why they do the things they do.
Polls and surveys are so often misleading and useless.
Any truly distinctive thing will be utterly unappealing to some people, even people within the same culture.
Principle 2: Emotion is the energy required to learn anything
Emotions create a series of mental connections (I call them mental highways) that are reinforced by repetition.
Principle 3: The structure, not the content, is the message
It didn’t matter if they took their cars into the city, down country lanes, or out on the open highway. What mattered was the connection between the driver and the car, between the experience of driving and the feelings evoked. These connections—this structure—gave us the clear sense that Americans derive a strong sense of identity from their cars, and led to the development of a car that would reinforce that sense of identity.
Principle 4: There is a window in time for imprinting, and the meaning of the imprint varies from one culture to another
You never get a second chance to have a first experience.
Principle 5: To access the meaning of an imprint within a particular culture, you must learn the code for that imprint
Think of the Code as a combination that unlocks a door.
Chapter 2: The Growing Pains of an Adolescent Culture
The codes for love, seduction, and sex
If you don't kill the king, you can stay young forever
We rebelled against the only king who ever tried to rule us and threw him out of “our room,” but we didn’t behead him. We simply told him to stay out.
Our rebellious period never really ended. Rather than moving on from it, we hold on to it and reinforce it when we welcome immigrants to our shores. These immigrants have left the country that was forced upon them at birth. Coming here is a huge act of rebellion. Like the American revolutionaries, they leave their old cultures behind rather than “finishing the job” by killing the king. Therefore, they remain rebels, and this constant influx of new adolescents helps keep our entire culture adolescent.
Would you rather be part of an adolescent culture or a senile one?
The American culture exhibits many of the traits consistent with adolescence: intense focus on the “now,” dramatic mood swings, a constant need for exploration and challenge to authority, a fascination with extremes, openness to change and reinvention, and a strong belief that mistakes warrant second chances. As Americans, we feel we know more than our elders do (for instance, we rarely consult France, Germany, Russia, or England on our foreign policy), that their answers are out of date (we pay little heed to the opinions of these cultures when it comes to global matters), and that we must reject their lessons and remake the world (few of us—even our leaders—are students of world history, choosing to make our own mistakes rather than learn from the mistakes other cultures have already made).
Like all adolescents, we are preoccupied with love, seduction, and sex. We are not unique in this regard. People in many cultures throughout the world are fascinated with these things, perhaps more than with anything else. After all, as human beings, we need sex at the very least to ensure the continuation of our species.
Adolescence is a time of confusion and contradictions. New discoveries are promising one day and disappointing the next. Dreams sprout, flower, and wilt as quickly as daffodils in the spring. Certainties become uncertainties in the blink of an eye.
Every individual is different, as he or she is also governed by his or her individual unconscious.) The revelation of the following Codes might be upsetting to you, but please remember that Codes are value neutral. The Codes themselves do not pass judgment on a particular culture. The American Codes simply reflect our cultural adolescence.
The American Culture Code for love is FALSE EXPECTATION.
Love means helping your partner achieve as much pleasure as possible, even if this requires finding someone else to provide some of this pleasure.
The Italians believe that life is a comedy rather than a tragedy and that one should laugh whenever possible. They expect love to contain strong dimensions of pleasure, beauty, and, above all, fun. If love becomes too dramatic or too hard, it is unsatisfying. The Italian culture centers very strongly on family, and Italians put their mothers up on pedestals. To them, true love is maternal love. Therefore, their expectations for romantic love are lower. Men romance women, but seek true love from their mothers. Women believe that the best way to express and experience love is by becoming mothers. A man is Mr. Right as long as he provides a child.
When Americans think of seduction, they think of being forced to do things they don’t want to do or that they believe they shouldn’t do.
The American Culture Code for sex is VIOLENCE.
Since we are uncomfortable with sex, we equate it with the extreme opposite of pleasure, something that causes pain and death. It is also clear that as a culture we are far more comfortable with violence than with sex. We consider it bad manners to discuss sex at the dinner table, but we permit lengthy conversations about war, crime, or the latest action movie. If a man is planning a hunting trip with the express intention of shooting and killing something, he can tell all his friends and coworkers and maybe display pictures of himself next to his “prize.” If, however, two unmarried colleagues plan a sexual encounter at a nearby hotel, they are likely to tell no one other than their closest confidants.
Chapter 3: Living on the Axis
The codes for beauty and fat
Life is tension. Everything we experience in life lies somewhere on an axis between two extremes. One cannot truly know pleasure without knowing pain. One cannot legitimately feel joy without having felt sorrow. The degree to which we feel an experience depends on where that experience lies on the axis.
The Code for beauty in America is MAN’S SALVATION.
The Code for fat in America is CHECKING OUT.
Given such a Code, is there any question why there are so many overweight people in this culture? As Americans, we are masters at putting undue pressure upon ourselves. We must be supermoms. We must climb the corporate ladder. We must have a relationship worthy of a Harlequin romance. That’s an awful lot to handle. In fact, for many of us, it’s much too much. Therefore, we unconsciously check out. Better to blame the fat than to acknowledge our desire to eschew expectations.
In the Eskimo culture, fat is a sign of hardiness. If one is fat, one can make it through the terrible winters when food is scarce. In the English culture, fat is a sign of vulgarity.
Before we can conquer the solution of fat, we need to answer one fundamental question: from what am I checking out?
Does eating make the problem go away? Does excess weight remove you from the circumstances that cause the problem (by, for example, making you unappealing to the opposite sex, or turning you into the wrong “type” for that big promotion)? Do you really want this solution?
Participants in these diets can “check in” to a large subculture of other people losing weight this way, giving them a sense of connection. Of course, these diets have little long-term value for most people because they don’t address the reasons people checked out in the first place.
If you’re beautiful, we’ve seen, you’re performing a noble mission; if you’re fat, you’re checking out of your role. We celebrate beauty, are awestruck by it, aspire to it. On the other hand, we discriminate against fat people and marginalize the morbidly obese.
Chapter 4: First Comes Survival
The codes for health and youth
Most humans find that in the struggle between intelligence and emotion, the limbic often comes out on top, as we are much more likely to allow our heart to guide us than reason.
Because survival is more fundamental to our existence than “feeling good” or “making sense,” the reptilian brain always rules the day. In a battle between logic, emotion, and instinct, the reptilian brain always wins.
One can trace the distinctive evolution of each culture on the planet to the survival needs of that culture.
Recovery meant walking up the driveway or taking a series of trips. Wellness was associated with long drives, roller skating, doing a job that had an impact on others, or African dance.
For Americans, health and wellness means being able to complete your mission.
Americans believe that if they are strong enough to act, then they are healthy. Their greatest fear about being sick is the inability to do things.
The Code for health and wellness in America is MOVEMENT.
If we put on the new glasses provided by this Code, certain behaviors in our culture stand out. Why do we fill up our free time? Why do retirees begin second careers? Why are we so devastated when, as we become elderly, we lose our driver’s licenses or find ourselves relegated to wheelchairs?
This is why retirees, after long, intensely active careers, feel lost when they give up their jobs. It is a very reptilian response. They can intellectually accept the notion that they’ve worked long enough and saved a sufficient amount to remain comfortable. They can feel a sense of relief when they realize they no longer need an early alarm clock. Their reptilian brains tell them something else, though: things have slowed down—maybe too much. Many of them suddenly find themselves with much less to do—with much less movement in their lives—and the prospect is frightening. Some seek comfort and health-affirming movement in hobbies or organizations. Some plunge into hypochondria and depression, feeling that the lack of movement in their lives suggests that their health is failing. Others take the most active path to solving this problem: they unretire. A second career restores a sense of movement and therefore returns their sense of good health.
For the Chinese, health means being in harmony with nature. Chinese medicine has been around for five thousand years and has always taken into consideration the human being’s place in the natural world—curing illness using plants and herbs, astrology, and even the phases of the moon. The Chinese believe that they live in permanent connection with the natural elements and that good health is related to being at peace with nature.
The Japanese, on the other hand, see good health as an obligation. If you are healthy, you are committed to contributing to your culture, your community, and your family. The Japanese are obsessive about remaining healthy, and they feel a powerful sense of guilt if they fall ill. Unlike our culture, in which children will fake fevers (via the old thermometer-to-the-lamp trick) or stomachaches to get out of school, Japanese children will apologize to their parents for getting sick, for they know illness may cause them to fall behind. In this culture, you don’t just wash your hands to stay clean, but also out of a sense of duty to yourself as a servant of the culture and to prevent someone else from getting sick because of you.
The Code for doctors in America is HERO.
The Code for nurse in America is MOTHER.
The Code for hospital in America is PROCESSING PLANT.
Doctors and nurses get us moving again and we love them for it. Hospitals keep us pinned down and we think terrible, terrible things about them.
Any product that suggests constraints on movement is off Code. A national retail chain recently launched an ad campaign using the tagline “Contain yourself.” I cringed.
We never want to be contained. We might want to contain our clutter, our old “stuff,” or our off-season clothing, but containing ourselves has no appeal at all.
Our reptilian brains program us for survival. People in every culture want to survive. In the American culture, however, we not only want to survive, we want to remain at the peak of our powers. It is not nearly enough to be an active old person in America. We want to retain the illusion of invincibility that every teenager has. Americans are fascinated with youth and the fanciful notion of staying young forever.
The American Culture Code for youth is MASK.
Hindu Indians believe there are four distinct stages to one’s life. Youth is the first and least interesting, something to pass through quickly as you gain the tools necessary to live in the world. The next stage, maturity, is when you have children, make money, and achieve success. The third stage is detachment. Here you step back from the world and the “rat race,” choosing instead to read and explore philosophy. In the fourth stage, you become the equivalent of a hermit.
With men, hair is the key to youthful appearance. Sometimes this means removing the gray. At other times it means regrowing hair that was once lost.
Understanding the Code allows us to step back to answer some important questions. Do I really want to go through life wearing a mask? What would happen if I took it off? Am I missing something by hanging on to youth rather than embracing and exploring maturity?
Given the need for our ancestors to build an entire country, we don’t think of health as merely freedom from disease but rather as the ability to accomplish things—to keep moving—and to continue to contribute late in our lives. Since our adolescent culture has no reverence for the elderly, we feel the need to mask our aging and create the illusion of being forever young.
Our cortexes might tell us that aging brings us wisdom. Our limbic systems might suggest that health is a matter of taking a positive outlook and feeling good. When our reptilian brains speak, however, we have no choice but to listen.
Chapter 5: Moving Beyond the Biological Scheme
The codes for home and dinner
The Code for home in America is the prefix “RE-.”
When we think of home, we think of words that begin with the prefix “re-.” Words like return (as the girl did when she came home from school), reunite (as the boy did when he got back from college), reconnect (as the family did when they told each other their highs and lows for the week, and as the woman did when she spoke to the picture of her father), reconfirm (as the boy did when he saw his family in the stands at his baseball games), and renew (as the woman did during her family’s various rituals).
Home is a place where you can do things repeatedly and have a good sense of the outcome—unlike the outside world, where everything can be so unpredictable.
The content of the box is unimportant (and often unknown). What is important is that the box contains “stuff,” and “stuff” has great value in making Americans feel at home.
The American Culture Code for dinner is ESSENTIAL CIRCLE.
The very strong message of the Code is that the circle is the important part of dinner. Food is secondary.
A Japanese family rarely eats dinner together. Commonly, the men work all day and then go out to drink with their friends. When they get home, their wives may serve them a little soup before they go to bed, but the children will have been fed long before. The notion of the family meal is relatively foreign in Japan. Even when a married couple goes out to dinner with friends, the men and women eat separately.
In China, dinner is all about the food. While the Chinese are eating dinner, they rarely speak with one another. Instead, they focus entirely on the food.
Dinner in England is a much more formal experience than it is in America. The English have very clear rules of behavior at the table, including how one sits while eating, how one uses one’s cutlery, and even how one chews.
Products that promote single servings are off Code for dinner, though they are of course not off Code for our busy lifestyles.
Chapter 6: Working For A Living
The codes for work and money
The American Culture Code for work is WHO YOU ARE.
Since work suggests who we are to us, we put significant stock into this progression. None of us want to feel that we are “done,” that who we are will remain stagnant for the remainder of our lives.
Promotions should come with new responsibilities and especially with new tools to help the employee do a more effective job (a better computer, access to an expense account, operation of machinery that is more powerful).
Sending an entire team to the Bahamas for a job well done actually blunts an employee’s efforts to do his best work. He only needs to perform well enough to help achieve the team objective. If, on the other hand, the employee knew that individual rewards were possible, he would be more likely to strive to outperform expectations.
Money reminds you that your “business is a good one,” that you’ve worked hard to get something, that you can carry your burdens, that you are appreciated, and that you are moving up to the next level. Not having money makes you feel as if you are “in a hole”; you may feel that “it’s gonna kill me.
The American Culture Code for money is PROOF.
Money isn’t a goal in and of itself for most Americans. We rely on it to show us that we are good, that we have true value in the world.
In France, a common topic at elegant dinner parties is sex. The French consider it entirely acceptable to discuss sexual positions, multiple partners, and different kinds of lingerie while entertaining guests. They consider the topic of money, however, to be vulgar; it is exceedingly impolite to ask how much money someone makes or how much he or she paid for something. Here, of course, we would be appalled by an explicit sexual discussion at dinner, but we can talk about money all night long. Different Culture Codes lead to different behaviors.
A company’s management must inspire employees to be the best they can possibly be and to make the company as strong as it can possibly be. This is on Code for both work and money and, if done effectively, leads to profitability.
Money alone is the worst reward for an American employee. It doesn’t last and it is never sufficient. Yes, money is proof, and as such, it is a critical component of any reward system. But the most on-Code approach is to use money as a global positioning system that shows the employee where he is on his career path. At every promotion, the employee should be shown a visual representation of the income curve that he or she is on. The angle at which one’s salary is climbing is a powerful symbol of growth. It is visual proof. A tangible award of some sort presented at the same time as the promotion gives the employee a tactile experience of his enhanced sense of who he is. Maybe it is a plaque of some sort. Maybe it is a new office, or a new accessory for the office. These tangible symbols last much longer than money, though they admittedly mean very little without it.
Chapter 7: Learning to Live With It
The Codes for Quality and Perfection
The Culture Code for quality in America is IT WORKS.
The Culture Code for perfection in America is DEATH.
Trying, failing, learning from our mistakes, and coming back stronger than ever is an essential part of the American archetype.
Failure and fallow periods are part of what makes America what it is, and we always come back stronger and in a more dominant position.
Americans find perfection boring. If something is perfect, you’re stuck with it for life, and that doesn’t sit well with most Americans. We want a new car every three years. We want a new television every five. We want a new house when we have kids, and another new one when the kids grow up.
We want things to become obsolete, because when they do we have the excuse we need to buy something new.
We have a simple and clear quality demand for our products: they need to work.
Because we equate perfection with death, we don’t expect anyone to make the perfect product. We expect our products to break down. However, because our Code for quality is IT WORKS, we expect problems to be resolved quickly and with a minimum of disruption. Americans are far more responsive to good service than they are to perfection. Crisis is a great opportunity to create loyalty. If a customer comes to you with a problem with a product or service and you solve that problem quickly and minimize the customer’s inconvenience, you will likely earn that customer’s dedication. You have proven yourself to the customer.
Ironically, if your product never breaks down, you never have the opportunity to develop this relationship with the customer. When the customer seeks to replace the product (as he inevitably will), he is likely to look elsewhere, because he hasn’t formed a bond with you. The bottom line is that great service is more important to Americans than great quality.
When one seeks to bring something new to a culture, one must adapt the idea to the culture. It doesn’t work the other way.
Chapter 8: More is More
The Codes for Food and Alcohol
“Here, we want our food as quickly as we can get it, even in a fine restaurant. The French, on the other hand, invented the notion of slow food. Even if they can make a dish quickly, they won’t, because they believe it is important first to set the mood for the diner and to build anticipation of the upcoming meal. In America, we put several different kinds of food—meat, fish, vegetables, starches, sometimes even fruit and cheese—on one plate because that is the most efficient way to serve a meal. In France, each kind of food comes on a different plate, to keep the flavors from mixing and to allow the diner to enjoy the separate qualities of each preparation. Americans want abundant quantities of all food and it is our goal to finish everything served to us. French portions are significantly smaller, and the French consider you vulgar if your plate or wineglass is empty at the conclusion of dinner. Americans end a meal by saying “I’m full.” The French end a meal by saying “That was delicious.
At the reptilian level, uncertainty about tomorrow’s meal tells us to eat lustily before the food goes away. While our cortexes tell us that the food will be available at the buffet all night, our reptilian brains aren’t taking any chances. In this battle between the brains, as in all such battles, the reptilian wins.
The Italian culture is strongly influenced by the model of aristocracy. An aristocrat would never gorge himself at a buffet. An aristocrat would never rush through his meal. An aristocrat tastes each morsel and appreciates the flavor and consistency. This aristocratic approach to food has trickled down to every level of Italian society. Regardless of their station, Italians have a strong sense of refinement when it comes to food and believe that overeating destroys their ability to appreciate taste. It is extremely unusual to find a buffet at any price in Italy.
The American Culture Code for food is FUEL.
Americans regard their bodies as machines. Our machines have functions to perform and we need to keep them working.
The French, while they don’t allow their children to drink in quantity, will expose them to alcohol (specifically, wine) at a very early age, allowing them to take a sip or perhaps to dip a cookie in a glass of champagne. They teach their children that wine enhances food and that older, lower-alcohol wines are best because the alcohol inhibits the flavor of the wine.
Americans teach their children that alcohol is an intoxicant that can lead to irresponsible behavior.
Forbidden to drink alcohol as children, and learning little about it other than that it is “bad” for you, Americans end up imprinting alcohol at a rebellious age. When they gain access to alcohol (usually underage, which enhances the sense that they are doing something taboo), they know nothing of its pleasures, subtleties, or role as an enhancer of food, but they quickly discover its intoxicating qualities.
Taste is unimportant. What matters is that this substance can do a job for you: it can get you drunk. As a bonus, your parents don’t want you to do it, so you can rebel and get wasted at the same time.
The American Culture Code for alcohol is GUN.
Sadly, marketing alcohol by selling quality of crafsmanship seems entirely off Code. It appeals to a small American subculture, in the same way that food magazines appeal to American foodies, but it will never capture the mass market.
We love things that help us get our jobs done and we fear things that get in the way.
Chapter 9: Juse Put That Alibi On My Gold Card
The Codes for Shopping and Luxury
Even when we allow our reptilian brains to guide us, we still make an effort to appease our cortexes. To do so, we make use of alibis. Alibis give “rational” reasons for doing the things we do. Our alibi for abstaining from casual sex is that we fear for our reputations or we fear sexually transmitted diseases, but our unconscious tells us that we fear violence. Our alibi for getting fat is that we love food or that our schedules don’t allow us to eat in a healthy manner, but our unconscious knows that we’re checking out.
An effective marketing campaign needs to consider the alibis while addressing the Code.
The American Culture Code for shopping is RECONNECTING WITH LIFE.
Yes, we shop because we need things, but shopping is more than a means of meeting material needs. It is a social experience. It is a way for us to get out of our homes and back into the world. It is something we can do with friends and loved ones. It is a way for us to encounter a wide variety of people and learn what’s new in the world—new products, new styles, and new trends—beyond what we see on television. We go shopping, and it seems as though the entire world is there.
This Code taps into the adolescent component of our culture. We all want to “go out and play.” We aren’t going to learn anything sitting alone at home. Only when we go out into the world do we discover anything new about life.
Buying is about carrying out a specific mission—purchasing groceries, picking up a book you saw on television, getting your kid new sneakers. It is a task. Shopping, on the other hand, is a wondrous experience filled with discovery, revelation, and surprise.
Retailers need to find a way to enable their customers to avoid this symbolic end of the shopping day, perhaps by registering their credit card information when they enter the store. The consumer can then walk out with whatever she wants and sensors will record the purchase. If the retailer also has a very liberal return policy, the consumer will feel as if the shopping experience never really ends—she can take home the items that interest her without the melancholy of checking out, “live with them” for a few days, and then return whatever she doesn’t need. This even offers the consumer an alibi for returning to the store. Nordstrom has based part of its reputation on its willingness to take items back with no questions asked. They’ve turned shopping into an open-ended experience.
The French Culture Code for shopping is LEARNING YOUR CULTURE.
The French consider shopping an educational experience in which older family members pass knowledge down through the generations. A mother will take her daughter shopping, teach her how to buy things, and through this process teach her how the culture operates. She’ll explain why it is important to buy bread, wine, and cheese at the same time (because they will be consumed together) or why certain colors and textures go together while others do not. A key phrase in the French shopping experience is “ça ne se fait pas,” meaning “One isn’t supposed to do that.” French women learn the rules of life by shopping with their mothers and grandmothers, and they become acculturated as they do. Shopping is the school of the culture.
Maybe you feel guilty about how long you take to pick something out. Maybe your spouse gives you a hard time about being indecisive. It turns out that your behavior is on Code and his is not. Enjoy the experience. Reconnect with life. Don’t buy anything if you don’t feel like it. You can always come up with another alibi to get back to the store.
Most of our favorite luxury items are functional. Americans seek luxury in things they can use: huge homes, top-of-the-line automobiles, professional-quality kitchens, designer clothes, and the like. In a culture with such a strong bias for action, we even design our vacations to restore us so we can get back to work.
Luxury in France represents the freedom to do nothing and to own useless things—things that provide beauty and harmony, but have no practical function.
To the French, luxury is something that offers the highest level of pleasure—the finest food, the most elegant clothing, the most refined fragrances. The French culture believes you are living a life of luxury if you can enjoy things that others (peasants, the working class, Americans) cannot enjoy.
The British use luxury to underscore their sense of detachment. They’ll join exclusive clubs where they can show one another how unimpressed they are with their own status. They’ll play polo matches, lose, and then tell everyone how sanguine they are about losing because winning wasn’t the point. Their aristocrats are notoriously unattractive and unadorned, their castles unheated, their chairs uncushioned.
The way we show our rank in American society is through our luxury items, and the American Culture Code for luxury is MILITARY STRIPES.
At the unconscious level, Americans believe that good people succeed, that success is bestowed upon you by God. Your success demonstrates that God loves you.
Of paramount importance to selling luxury in America is supplementing your product with luxury service. Treating your high-end customers as though they are members of an “officers’ club” is precisely on Code. Once an American has earned his stripes, he wants to be treated accordingly. He wants to be seen as someone who is actively involved in achieving significant things and he wants to know that you realize his time and presence are valuable.
In addition, one must always remember that we need our alibis. Our cultural unconscious will lead us to respond positively to luxury items that offer us “stripes,” but our cortexes must be satisfied as well. We’ll buy a $4,000 professional cooktop, but only if you convince us that it will make our kitchen more functional. We’ll spend an extra $200 a day for spa services in our four-star hotel, but only if you convince us that we’ll emerge refreshed and ready to resume our mission.
Alibis work because they seem legitimate. They give us good reason to do things we want to do anyway. We can reconnect with life. We can exhibit our stripes. And our cortexes won’t give us the least bit of trouble.
Chapter 10: Who Do These Upstarts Think They Are?
The Codes for America in Other Cultures
The Code for America in France is SPACE TRAVELERS.
The Code for America in Germany is JOHN WAYNE.
The image of John Wayne is of the strong, friendly stranger who helps save a town from trouble and then moves on with no expectation of thanks or remuneration. John Wayne is a tough guy. He’s “the law.” He never, however, shoots first.
English participants spoke of us as big, loud, powerful, vulgar, extreme, and determined to win at any cost. They talked about our lack of restraint, our lack of tradition, and our lack of a class system, while at the same time admiring our confidence, passion, record of success, and can-do attitude.
The English Code for America is UNASHAMEDLY ABUNDANT.
The French Code for France is IDEA. Raised on stories of great French philosophers and thinkers, French children imprint the value of ideas as paramount and refinement of the mind as the highest goal.
The English Code for England is CLASS. There is a strong sense among the English that they are of a higher social stratum than other people. This arises from England’s long history of world leadership (“the sun never sets on the British Empire”) and from the messages passed down from generation to generation that being English is a special privilege that one receives at birth.
The Culture Code for Germany itself: ORDER.
It is not possible for an American company to succeed in the world marketplace with one global message. A global strategy requires customizing for each culture, though it is always important that the strategy embrace “American-ness.”
For a company breaking into a foreign market or an individual looking for the ideal place to live, the most important thing is to connect with the Code.
Chapter 11: Parting of the Red Sea Optional
The Code for the American Presidency
“Our leader is the person who leads the rebellion. This is essential in a culture where health means movement. We are always changing, always moving forward, always reinventing, and we want a president who can direct this process. The president needs to understand what is broken, have a strong idea about how to fix it, and then “rebel” against the problem. The nature of the rebellion is always changing, and we tend to choose the president who understands this best.
One cannot be a terribly effective rebel if one cannot state clearly (in words or deeds) what one stands for.
As with everything else, the reptilian always wins. We don’t want our presidents to think too much. We want them to respond from the gut, to have a very strong survival instinct. The candidate doesn’t need to be extremely reptilian, only more reptilian than his opponent is. In the 2000 election, Bush wasn’t a particularly strong reptilian, but his opponent was very cortex.
We want someone with a highly developed vision who makes us pay attention when he speaks. We want someone with a strong reptilian side who can take care of our country. We want someone who can help us rebel against our problems and lead us into the Promised Land because he knows what is wrong and how to fix it. We don’t want a father figure. We want a biblical figure.
The Culture Code for the American presidency is MOSES.
Moses also made his people believe they could do the impossible.
But we don’t expect our presidents to be ideal humans touched by a divine hand, like the biblical Moses. We don’t want our presidents to be perfect—most important, we don’t want them to consider themselves perfect. As we’ve already seen, Americans have strong apprehensions about perfection. We are culturally adolescent, and we expect our president to be adolescent as well. We expect him to be connected to the American soul, and that means rarely doing things right the first time. Instead, we expect him to make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, and be better for it.
The beauty of the American Constitution is that our most powerful leaders don’t have too much power.
The basic components of the country really do not change very much during one presidential administration. What does change is the spirit of the country, the sense of optimism or the lack thereof. This largely relates to the president’s ability to fill the shoes of Moses, to make us believe that he can take us to the Promised Land.
The “vision thing” is critical, as is the ability to get one’s message across and inspire. Americans don’t want father figures who tell them what to do, but they do want men (and someday, maybe even soon, women) with a plan they can understand and follow. In addition, they decidedly do not want a president who thinks too much. Except under extraordinary circumstances, the more reptilian candidate always wins.
Chapter 12: Never Growing Up, Never Giving Up
The Code for America
We have never taken the notion of cutting back well. How many of us listen to our doctors when they tell us to eat smaller portions? How many of us muse longingly about living in a smaller house?
The American Culture Code for America is DREAM.
We see love as false expectations because we dream of romances that can last a lifetime. We see beauty as man’s salvation because we dream that we can truly make a difference in someone’s life. We see fat as checking out because we chase dreams so hard that they sometimes overwhelm us. We see health as movement because we dream of a life without limits. We think of work as who we are because we dream that we have a contribution to make and that we can become tremendously successful at our chosen professions. We see shopping as reconnecting with life because we dream of our place in a bigger world. We see money as proof, and luxury as military stripes, because money and luxury make visible our dreams of our best selves. We see the American president as Moses because we dream that someone can lead us to an even better America.
Our notion of abundance is a dream: it is the dream of limitless opportunity that we believe is synonymous with being American. Our need for constant movement is the expression of a dream in which we can always do more, always create and accomplish. Even our cultural adolescence is a dream: we want to believe we are forever young and that we never truly have to grow up.
Optimism is not only absolutely on Code, it is essential to keeping our culture vibrant. We do the “impossible” because we believe it is our destiny. In fact, the times when America has faltered as a culture have been the times when it has allowed pessimism to become a prevalent force.
Pessimism is off Code in America, as is self-hatred. We must always keep in mind that mistakes are valuable to us because we learn from them and become stronger as a result. When we have a down period, we must always keep in mind that we have historically followed these with long stretches of growth and prosperity.
Our European friends have predicted the “end” of America dozens of times, but the end has never even come close to happening. One of our favorite icons is the Comeback Kid. We love people who fail and then rise up again (as in Bill Clinton’s comeback after the Lewinsky scandal and Martha Stewart’s comeback from imprisonment) because it is such a strong cultural trait. The way New York City (and the entire country, really) bounced back after 9/11 is truly inspiring and precisely on Code.
We want to encourage people to have big ideas, to take risks, and to learn from their mistakes. We want to promote reinvention and starting over. It is entirely on Code for people to change careers, locales, or living situations as long as they genuinely believe that doing so gives them a chance to grow.
It is America’s mission to provide dreams to humanity. Not by forcing our ideology down anyone’s throat, but by sharing our vision in our films, our books, our products and inventions, our acts of charity, and our efforts in bringing aid to underdeveloped nations.
That is the freedom to dream, to eschew cynicism and pessimism, and to allow yourself to imagine the boldest things for yourself and your world.