Author: Clotaire Rapaille
I have recently read a couple of books that attempt to explain macro phenomenon by looking through the lens of the culture of its people. "Boomerang" by Michael Lewis explains the financial crisis that is unfolding in many European countries and ties it to the cultural traits of their inhabitants. Rapaille on the other hand has written an entire book on interpreting the code for American culture and he brings this out by contrasting it with the culture of other countries, most notably France, where he was born.
Way back when Isaac Asimov ruled the Science Fiction world, he introduced the concept of "psychohistory" -- the idea that you cannot predict what an individual will do, but with a sufficiently large population, you can apply a probabilistic framework to predict the general flow of future events. When Rapaille describes the peculiarities of Americans, French or Italians, it is important to view it as a description of a large population and not a specific individual in that country. When viewed with that lens, the book offers great insight into cultural norms and how they can be tapped in developing and marketing a successful product.
Rapaille's writing style is lucid and is a pleasure to read. His opinionated observations are incisive and I found myself reading several parts multiple times to fully appreciate his view. There are many memorable quotes and passages in the book like "you never get a second chance to have a first experience." This seems cliched, but when you read it again you realize he is talking about "experience" and not "impression".
While I did not find myself agreeing with all of Rapaille's codes, the explanations of seduction in different cultures was spot on and hilarious. Another insightful chapter was the differing notions of quality in various cultures. For example quality in US can be summed up as "IT WORKS" and this is quite a far cry from the notion of quality in Japan which is perfection!
Many reviewers that were critical of the book, seemed to have a hard time accepting all that Rapaille had to say without any real scientific evidence. While it is true that most of what is written here can be dismissed as one man's opinion, it will certainly get you thinking and more observant of cultural traits. I found myself in agreement with a majority of the observations and was quite amused at the way Rapaille presented them.
There is one aspect of the book that I found hard to swallow. The notion of distilling these observations down to a single code word seems a bit contrived. Rapaille goes the extra mile in finding all kinds of circumstantial proof that resonates with the code word to justify it. This is probably the weakest part of his thesis. However, if you take that with a grain of salt and view it as a way to anchor a theme and provide direction to a marketing campaign, the code words might serve a purpose.
Overall, I highly recommend this to folks who are in the business of building and selling products in the global marketplace.
I have recently read a couple of books that attempt to explain macro phenomenon by looking through the lens of the culture of its people. "Boomerang" by Michael Lewis explains the financial crisis that is unfolding in many European countries and ties it to the cultural traits of their inhabitants. Rapaille on the other hand has written an entire book on interpreting the code for American culture and he brings this out by contrasting it with the culture of other countries, most notably France, where he was born.Way back when Isaac Asimov ruled the Science Fiction world, he introduced the concept of "psychohistory" -- the idea that you cannot predict what an individual will do, but with a sufficiently large population, you can apply a probabilistic framework to predict the general flow of future events. When Rapaille describes the peculiarities of Americans, French or Italians, it is important to view it as a description of a large population and not a specific individual in that country. When viewed with that lens, the book offers great insight into cultural norms and how they can be tapped in developing and marketing a successful product.
Rapaille's writing style is lucid and is a pleasure to read. His opinionated observations are incisive and I found myself reading several parts multiple times to fully appreciate his view. There are many memorable quotes and passages in the book like "you never get a second chance to have a first experience." This seems cliched, but when you read it again you realize he is talking about "experience" and not "impression".
While I did not find myself agreeing with all of Rapaille's codes, the explanations of seduction in different cultures was spot on and hilarious. Another insightful chapter was the differing notions of quality in various cultures. For example quality in US can be summed up as "IT WORKS" and this is quite a far cry from the notion of quality in Japan which is perfection!
Many reviewers that were critical of the book, seemed to have a hard time accepting all that Rapaille had to say without any real scientific evidence. While it is true that most of what is written here can be dismissed as one man's opinion, it will certainly get you thinking and more observant of cultural traits. I found myself in agreement with a majority of the observations and was quite amused at the way Rapaille presented them.
There is one aspect of the book that I found hard to swallow. The notion of distilling these observations down to a single code word seems a bit contrived. Rapaille goes the extra mile in finding all kinds of circumstantial proof that resonates with the code word to justify it. This is probably the weakest part of his thesis. However, if you take that with a grain of salt and view it as a way to anchor a theme and provide direction to a marketing campaign, the code words might serve a purpose.
Overall, I highly recommend this to folks who are in the business of building and selling products in the global marketplace.
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