A Master Key to Why People Buy
- How Nestle ENGINEERED the consumer market they wanted. No James Bond villain could conjure up THIS billion-dollar scheme. It worked liked crazy …
- You must be joking. The most successful new car launch in American history was designed by folks lying on their backs daydreaming about ‘getting lucky’ in the backseat?
- An astounding resource for understanding markets and mass desire …
- And (dare I say, it?) much, MUCH MORE!
Dear Business Builder,
Back in the 1970s, in a move seemingly destined for failure, Nestle decided to try and get Japan to switch from drinking tea to drinking coffee.
Blindly ignoring simple facts like, the Japanese have been drinking tea for thousands of years … that drinking tea is deeply ingrained in Japanese culture … and no one in Japan wanted to drink coffee.
Surprise, surprise coffee sales sucked.
And that’s where things get REALLY interesting.
Nestle commissioned a very special type of research study. And that study spawned breakthroughs into understanding the deep motivations of entire cultures that would lead to some of the most exciting marketing campaigns in the last 30 years.
Today, 30 years later, Japan consumes more than 500 Million lbs. of coffee a year because of what Nestle did with the results of that study.
What magical power did Nestle wield to sway the Japanese to drinking coffee?
Anthropology, my friend, Cultural Anthropology … with a capital ‘A.’
The anthropological secret
for tapping into mass desire
Legendary copywriter and marketer Eugene Schwartz, in his book Breakthrough Advertising, defined mass desire as, ‘the public spread of a private want.’
He emphatically believed, ‘the power, the force, the overwhelming urge to own [is what] makes advertising work, comes from the market itself.’
Without understanding the forces of mass desire in a market your success in selling to it becomes limited.
So how does anthropology fit in? To see that, let’s think back to our childhoods for a second …
If you’re like most of us, as a child you were told not to touch the hot pan on a stove because you’d get burned.
And, if you were like me, at some point you reached out and got burned anyway. And, all of a sudden, you understood what “hot” and “burn” meant. And you were careful around a hot stove ever since.
Before getting burned though, the concepts of ‘hot’ and ‘burn’ were just abstractions to you. It wasn’t until you had the, ‘Holy crap! That hurt!’ emotional experience, that they became concrete.
Enter Dr. Clotaire Rapaille, anthropologist extraordinaire.
His area of expertise is emotional imprinting. The idea behind his work is that learning and emotion are inextricably linked. And the combination of emotion with experience creates an “imprint.”
These imprints stay with us for the rest of our lives and color the way we view the world.
But the doctor’s research gets more specific. He found that if you are American you have completely different emotional imprints than if you are French, or from any other culture.
If you remember the story of the Lego kids you’ll recall the dramatic differences between how an American child and a German child play with toys.
Understanding the different imprints a culture passes on gives the CODES for unlocking their motivations.
And, as we both know, the study and understanding of MARKETS gives you powerful insights into how to get people to buy. Because it reveals the underlying desires of large groups of potential customers … how they see the world … and how they react to your product, marketing and messages.
In fact, Dr. Rapaille’s research is so startling and produces such powerful marketing campaigns that 50 of the Fortune 100 have him on retainer. And his insights have produced some of the most effective marketing campaigns for companies like L’Oreal, Chrysler, JP Morgan and more.
How Nestle grew a coffee market in Japan
Let’s go back to Japan, circa 1970. They don’t want coffee. Why? Because they have no emotional connection to coffee whatsoever.
But every Japanese man and woman has a ton of emotional experiences from childhood surrounding tea. So how can you sell them coffee as a replacement for tea?
You can’t.
But, you can create a strategy to CREATE emotional imprints. And that’s what Nestle did. How?
By introducing coffee flavored (non-caffeinated) dessert treats for kids. The desserts were a huge hit! And as those kids grew up the positive emotional imprint with coffee flavor grew into openness to drinking coffee.
Obviously, that’s a very long term strategy that is more of a curiosity to you and me.
The real value is in knowing how to tap into the cultural codes your target markets already have.
The most successful car launch in history was born from knowing:
80% of Americans had their first
sexual experience in a car
Armed with that knowledge, what design changes do you make to sell more cars?
Bigger backseats, maybe?
Surprisingly, no.
When Chrysler retained Dr. Rapaille to uncover the cultural code for cars in the U.S. sedan sales were way down. Americans were buying more and more SUVs, minivans and trucks.
Industry pundits pontificated that sedans were going the way of the Dodo Bird in the U.S. market. So deciding what vehicles to put their money behind was a big question for Chrysler.
The Dr.’s research uncovered the emotional experiences – the imprints – Americans have for cars. And, despite what we say, we didn’t want cars that get good gas mileage; we didn’t want safety or reliability. At least, these are not the dominant drivers of why we buy cars.
The American imprint of cars is characterized by …
- The feelings of freedom, and new life associated with first being allowed to drive (And the sense that life has come to a stop if you ever lost the privilege) …
- Of sensual experience, like I said, 80% of Americans had their first sexual experience in a car …
- The enjoyment and bonding between a family when going out on weekend trips or other vacations …
With so many powerful emotional experiences surrounding cars it becomes clear that features like good gas mileage, reliability and safety aren’t what we’re after.
The Dr.’s research found that we wanted cars with a strong identity and had a sensual quality to them.
So the Doctor and Chrysler’s design team set out to create a car with a strong identity. They chose the classic “gangster’ car as their model. The kind of car Al Capone drives in movies as their basis.
The PT Cruiser was the result. And it was the most successful car launch in recent memory. People paid $4,000 EXTRA just to get onto the waiting list for the car.
And since then Chrysler has created a series of vehicles with strong identity and the response has been huge. The tough looking Dodge Charger is the only vehicle cutting into the police car turf of Ford’s Crown Victoria. And I don’t think it has anything to do with the features of the car. It taps into the classic American muscle car look.
So how does this help
a copywriter or business owner?
It’s all about the conversations your prospect is already having in his head.
The Culture Code reveals dozens of codes about how Americans – and cultures like France, Germany, Japan and others – view the world. Including the codes for things like, beauty and fat, health and youth, home and dinner, work and money, shopping and luxury and more!
Knowing and understanding these codes allows you to zero in on your prospects’ and customers’ underlying emotional experience. And lets you tap into these emotions much more readily.
If you were to talk about a benefit that was completely out of whack with the codes for your market your promotions would have no chance of connecting emotionally with people.
For instance, if you tried selling a business opportunity product that was a big hit in the U.S. to people in France – you might be shocked at just how badly it would sell.
Why? Because, unlike in the U.S. the French don’t associate their work with who they are. Work is looked down on and falls far behind the pursuit of pleasure.
Consider that an American BILLIONAIRE will continue to work full time while your average citizen of France would rather go on welfare than work at a job they don’t like.
Understanding cultural idiosyncrasies can improve the power of your promotions.
Look at how successful health newsletters
correctly apply the American code for Doctors …
Doctors save lives and the underlying cultural imprint in the U.S. for them is that of HEROES.
And when you look at many of the most successful health newsletters in the industry you’ll see how this heroic image of doctors resonates with prospects.
The newsletter editor epitomizes the ‘Doctor as Hero’ image:
- Healthy Directions newsletter editor, Dr. Julian Whitaker is positioned as the ‘crusading humanitarian’ with ‘enormous compassion for suffering patients.’ And actually FIGHTS for you by SUING the FDA!
He’s even ‘in the trenches battling disease.’
- Dr. David Williams, editor of Alternatives, is positioned as the Indiana Jones of medicine. He’s the ‘CURE-HUNTER’ – about as overt a hero reference as you can get.
- Agora’s Dr. Douglas has heroically been ‘exposing medical conspiracies and pioneering breakthrough treatments for nearly 4 decades.’
On the flip side of the image are the villain-doctors who betray their heroic status for baser wants. The ever-present ‘knife-happy surgeons who’ll cut a hole right through you to get to your wallet.’
Order The Culture Code to see how these codes have been used to create hugely successful marketing strategies for the same product in different cultures.
Like …
- Why L’Oreal decided NOT to use sex appeal when selling beauty products to American woman, even though that strategy worked like gangbusters in France …
- How understanding the code for youth opened the door to a much larger market for Pantene hair products …
- What is the underlying cause for the enormous popularity of ‘Fad Diets.’ And why NOT adding this element to your weight loss promotions and products prevents them from becoming huge hits …
And that’s just the beginning.
If you’re the kind of marketer committed to understanding why people live and buy as they do, you’ll want to read The Culture Code by Dr. Clotaire Rapaille.
And check out his newsletter at, Archetype Discoveries Worldwide.
To your faster success,
John Newtson
Editor, Life in the Fast Lane
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2 Comments »
Join the Discussion!
Let us know what you think. Or ask us anything. Or offer your own sage advice.
The only rule: RESPECT THIS HOUSE! Postings that contain abusive language and/or personal attacks will be cheerfully VAPORIZED. One cross word and – POOF! – your well-thought-out post will be gone in a puff of smoke.
– Clayton
Comment by Dwight White — August 4, 2007 @ 5:42 pm
John,I recall two headlines that Clayton wrote…
\”The seven horsemen of the comming stock market apocalypse\” and…
\”Black October\”
In the case of the first, connecting with a biblical imprint common to prospects who had a religious upbringing.
For the latter, these prospects had lived through the Great Depression and that headline resonated with them.
Both big winners I understand.
Comment by John C. A. Manley — August 8, 2007 @ 6:34 am
This adds a new angle to marketing via the \”world wide web.\” I know some marketers who are putting up different versions of their sites in the countries domain extensions, with different copy, etc.
A financial direct mail piece that did well in th US bombed in the UK until the opening sentence, \”making money in their homes…\” was changed to \”making money [I]quietly[/I] in their own homes.\”
A self-promo letter a copywriting contact of mine wrote gained a 23% response in Canada and a 2.3% in the US.
John