An internationally revered cultural anthropologist and marketing expert reveals techniques, perfected over three decades of working with Fortune 100 companies, that allow him to decode the most powerful symbols within a culture and understand why we do the things we do.DNA makes a creature human, but what makes someone an American? Is there a "culture code" that programs us to become German, or Japanese, or French? Dr. Clotaire Rapaille believes there is such a code, a silent system of archetypes that we unconsciously acquire as we grow up within our culture. The codes vary around the world and invisibly shape how we behave in our personal lives and as consumers and as nations.
Dr. Rapaille used his ability to break the "culture code" to help Chrysler build the PT Cruiser—the most successful American car launch in recent memory. He used it to help Nestlé introduce coffee to the tea culture of Japan and to explain why George W. Bush is on code for the U.S. presidency and John Kerry was on code for the French presidency. And now, in The Culture Code, he uses it to reveal what makes Americans American and what makes us different from the world around us. Dr. Rapaille decodes fundamental archetypes ranging from sex to money to health to America itself.
Like Malcolm Gladwell's Blink or Alvin Toffler's Future Shock, The Culture Code is a book that gives us all a revolutionary way of understanding and dealing with the world. Why do we act, buy, and love as we do? The answers are in the Codes.
Published by Broadway Books
July 2007
Trade Paperback, 224 pages
ISBN: 978-0-7679-2057-5 (0-7679-2057-0)
