Clotaire Rapaille - Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Buy and Live as They Do

One of the handicaps of the twentieth century is that we still have the vaguest and most biased notions, not only of what makes Japan a nation of Japanese, but of what makes the United States a nation of Americans, France a nation of Frenchmen, and Russia a nation of Russians.... Lacking this knowledge, each country misunderstands the other.

Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword

We are all puppets, and our best hope for even partial liberation is to try to decipher the logic of the puppeteer.

Robert Wright, The Moral Animal

INTRODUCTION

F or Americans, its a gallop. For Europeans, its a march. For Jeep, it was a breakthrough.

In the late 1990s, the Jeep Wrangler was struggling to regain its place in the American market. Once in a category all its own, it had been supplanted by scores of SUVs, most of which were bigger, more luxurious, and better suited to soccer moms. Chrysler had reached a crossroads with the Wrangler and gave serious thought to a major overhaul.

When I began working with Chrysler on the Jeep Wrangler in the late 1990s, the companys management was understandably suspicious about my approach to learning consumer preferences. Theyd done extensive market research and had asked dozens of focus groups hundreds of questions. I walked through the door with a bunch of different approaches and they said to themselves, What is this guy going to give us that we dont already have?

The people at Chrysler had indeed asked hundreds of questions; they just hadnt asked the right ones. They kept listening to what people said. This is always a mistake. As a result, they had theories about moving the Wrangler in multiple directions (more luxurious, more like a traditional car, without removable doors, enclosed rather than convertible, and so on) with no clear path to follow. The Wranglerthe classic consumer Jeepverged on losing its distinctive place in the universe of automobiles, becoming, for all intents and purposes, just another SUV.

When I put groups of consumers together, I asked them different questions. I didnt 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 imageof 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 dont have luxury appointments. Horses dont 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.

The executives werent particularly moved. After all, they had vast research that told them consumers said they wanted something else. Maybe people once thought of Jeeps as horses, but they didnt want to think of them that way any longer. I asked them to test my theory by making a relatively minor adjustment to the cars design: replacing the square headlights with round ones. Why? Because horses have round eyes, not square ones.

When it turned out that it was cheaper to build the car with round headlights, the decision became easier for them to make. They tested the new design and the response was instantly positive. Wrangler sales rose and the new face of the Wrangler became its most prominent and marketable feature. In fact, the cars logo has incorporated its grille and round headlights ever since. There are even Jeep fan clubs that distribute T-shirts to their members bearing the legend Real Jeeps have round headlights.

Meanwhile, the company began to advertise the car as a horse. My favorite ad shows a child in the mountains with a dog. The dog falls off a cliff and clings precariously to a tree. The kid runs into a nearby village for help. He passes sedans, minivans, and SUVs until he comes upon a Jeep Wrangler. The Wrangler scales the treacherous mountain terrain and its driver rescues the dog. The kid hugs the dog and then turns to thank the driverbut the Jeep is already heading back down the mountain, just like an old Western hero heading off into the sunset upon his steed. The campaign was a smash.

Bolstered by its American success, Chrysler hired me to discover the Code for the Wrangler in Europe. 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.

With the news of the Code, Chrysler launched new campaigns in France and Germany. Here, though, instead of positioning the car as a horse, they stressed the Jeeps proud past and the freedom gained from driving a Wrangler. These campaigns were also tremendously successful, expanding market share for the Wrangler in both countries.

By this point, Chryslers executives no longer doubted my approach. Theyd come to appreciate the power of the Culture Code.

F or Ritz-Carlton, the revelation came unexpectedly, viatoilet paper. When I began to consult for this company, I shocked them by telling them that the work they needed to do to improve customer satisfaction had to begin in the bathroom. Of course they thought I was delirious, but they heard me out.

If you ask most people why they buy the toilet paper they do, they will say, Because it is soft and because it is on sale. They have no idea that the Code for toilet paper might be anything but strictly utilitarian. They are wrong. As with Jeep, my work with consumers to crack the Code for toilet paper revealed something powerful and unexpected about Americans first imprint of a familiar product.

For American parents, toilet training is taken very seriously. For some, toilet training is considered so essential that they start the process not long after their childs first birthday. And, regardless of when they start, parents support a small industry of books, videos, and even psychologists who focus on the task. (A current controversy in the field involves the idea of the diaper-free baby, who may be toilet trained as early as eight months old!) 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.

For the American child himself, however, the completion of toilet training triggers a different response. Once he can use the toilet by himselfor, more specifically, use the toilet and toilet paper by himselfa remarkable thing happens. The child can now close the bathroom door, maybe even lock it, and