Culture Code

My earliest memory of the 4th of July is the annual street dance we used to have on the night before the fourth. Every house on our block had a yard party, and people wandered up and down the block freely. As a kid, the Ridge Avenue Street Dance meant garbage cans full of soda pop (as much as I could drink), it meant parents otherwise occupied, and it meant staying up past midnight. The actual 4th meant fireworks. Blankets, mosquitoes and pretending to be blown up by aerial bombs. This year I started teaching all these things to my kids (except the garbage cans full of pop of course).

Why am I sharing my earliest memories of Independence Day?

Well, in and amongst this year’s July 4th weekend (2006) I got a chance to read “The Culture Code,” by Clotaire Rapaille. Rapaille is a cultural anthropologist whose research techniques have made him a quasi-rock star among corporate marketing circles.

Rapaille’s theory centers around the notion that different cultures produce different mindsets, or “codes”. He says that there is a “culture code” that causes people of different cultures to think differently about life, products and services. Understand this code, he says, and you can discover why people behave as they do; and you can use this knowledge to do more business. He is marketing consultant to several of the top Fortune brands.

His process is fairly straightforward. To uncover the “code” for say, cars, he will gather a group of people from a particular country and put them through a serious of three research excercises.

First, he seeks to uncover the groups first imprint on cars. Imprinting is a psychological term which suggests that learning is associated with emotion. In fact, many believe that learning cannot occur without emotion; and the more emotion a person feels at the time of an experience, the more deeply rooted (imprinted) the newfound information becomes.

Next, Rapaille leads his subjects through a second excercise designed to reveal their most powerful memories on the subject. Back on the subject of cars, Rapaille asserts that 80% of Americans have their first sexual experience inside their cars.  That’s bound to color anyone’s perception!

Finally, a third excercise elicits the groups most recent memories on the subject. After these three steps, Rapaille analyzes the responses and looks for common themes and boils it all down to what he calls “the code” for this subject. The American “code” for cars, by they way, is IDENTITY. The German code for cars is ENGINEERING, or so says Rapaille.

It’s important to note that the “Culture Code” is an unconcious notion. Rapaille purposefully does not ask subjects what they want in a product. That would be pointless. Rapaille believes that people don’t know why they do what they do. Instead, he believes that behavior is a result of all the imprints people pick up throughout their lives.

The book offers dozens of examples and does a pretty good job supporting the Culture Code thesis. We have known for years that emotion plays a critical role in why people buy. It makes sense that if we understand emotional drivers then we can use these drivers to cause people to buy what we want them to buy.

At the same time I can’t help feeling a bit repulsed by the implications of this book. If we understand the stories people tell themselves (All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin), then we can use those stories to tell people what they want to hear, and get their money in exchange for a temporary feeling of fulfillment. That’s not a business I want to be in.

While Rapaille’s work on emotinal archetypes is certainly important, I wonder if there isn’t another deeper level to human nature that is not bounded by culture. Rapaille’s work is temporal. I’m after the ETERNAL.

Playing on emotions (for a living) is a lot like fishing with artificial lures (instead of live bait). The fisherman can fill his stringer, but the fish is left hungry and confused and dead. What he thought was food turned out to be a trap. Of course the fisherman’s aim is different than the marketer’s. Or is it?

We are an emotional species, no doubt. But there is an existence beyond emotion that I aspire to reach. The best example I can give you is LOVE. Is it an emotion? Or is it more than that?

We humans have a hard time defining the word love. We tend to categorize it as an emotion. Thus, it is fleeting. It changes. Interestingly, Rapaille’s book offers the “code” for love in several cultures. Rapaille asserts that the American code for love is FALSE EXPECTATION.

I believe his definition misses the mark. It makes sense that Rapaille’s methods would lead him to this conclusion. After all we appear to be a society that is confused about love. We tend to connect it with lust or we set it up on a pedestal and think it’s something that’s impossible to achieve. I used to feel that way myself.

Before I got married I never thought I would find a single woman I’d want to spend my life with. I simply didn’t think I had the capacity. I’m too picky and I change my mind too often. But then I learned about what love really is.

The Bible says that “God is love.” It also says that God is eternal. He existed before the world  – and he will exist forever. That would suggest the Love is eternal. It is not an emotion, for emotions are fleeting.

Here’s my first imprint on love: marriage. The Bible says, “you love because I first loved you.” In other words, humans don’t have the capacity to love except that God gives it to us. We can have all the emotions we want. We’ve got time on our hands. But LOVE does not change. When I realized that I could be true to one woman for my entire life as long as I allowed GOD’S LOVE to be at the center of my marriage, only then did I have the confidence (faith) to get engaged.

I’ve come to rely on the power of God’s love to take on other major duties, like parenthood. As I’ve allowed God to help me I’ve been able to develop relationships that I never thought possible, and I’ve left my old, emotional definition of love in the dust where it belongs.

I pray that God would keep me in the eternal mindset and not let me become so distracted by my emotions that I chase down blind alleys. There is only misery down there.

Back to July 4, 2006. I had a nice day, but I felt like there was something missing. Our family had a great day. We played baseball, caught frogs, shot off fireworks, barbequed. The whole works. So why did I feel (as I have in past years) that there was something missing? My “Code” for July 4th is: independence! That’s pretty tough when you’ve got 4 kids (6 years old and younger). Thankfully, love rules the day so I can identify that false voice in my head that says “you deserve to do whatever you want today!” Instead I invest myself in my family, and I look back on the day and feel totally satisfied.

God is love. He loves me. He loves you. And if we believe in his son, Jesus, we will live forever in heaven and never have to battle with these earthly (human) emotional concerns.

Now that’s independence!