The Culture Code

An Ingenious Way To Understand Why People Around The World Live And Buy As They Do

By: Clotaire Rapaille

Narrated by: Barrett Whitener

Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

Internationally revered cultural anthropologist and marketing expert Clotaire Rapaille reveals for the first time the techniques he has used to improve profitability and practices for dozens of Fortune 100 companies. His groundbreaking revelations shed light not just on business but on the way every human being acts and lives around the world.

Rapaille's breakthrough notion is that we acquire a silent system of Codes as we grow up within our culture. These Culture Codes invisibly shape how we behave in our personal lives, even when we are completely unaware of our motives. We can learn to crack these Codes and achieve new understanding of why we do the things we do. He has used the Culture Code to help Chrysler build the PT Cruiser: the most successful American car launch in recent memory; helped Procter & Gamble design its ad campaign for Folger's coffee, one of the longest-lasting and most successful campaigns in the annals of advertising; and he's helped GE, AT&T, Boeing, Honda, Kellogg, and L'Oreal improve their bottom line at home and abroad. And now, in this fascinating audiobook, he uses it to reveal why Americans act distinctly like Americans and what makes us different from the world around us.

Understanding the Codes gives us unprecedented freedom over our lives. It lets us do business in dramatically new ways. And it finally explains why people around the world really are different and reveals the hidden clues to understanding us all.

©2006 Clotaire Rapaille (P)2007 Gildan Media Corp

Mapping cultures

The Culture Code is a sweeping survey of historical culture types, marketing, sociology and modern cultural analysis. This is an excellent but wildly mislabeled book. It's audio introduction said something about self-improvement (which it relates to in a huge stretch). What it really is is a psychological view of 'the Other' in the sense of viewing other cultures, groups, and national populations.

Rapaille spends a little time reviewing his successful consulting career to large corporations looking to define themselves and their products. This explains his background and provides the data for his series of case studies in how the code was developed and used. He uses archetypes, psychology, and language differences to explain why Germans buy the same vehicles as the French and Americans but for vastly different reasons. Yes, this does lead to generalizations and overstatements, but they are arguable points with interesting tangents.

Listening to this book before listening to "Nudge" or "The Wisdom of Crowds" or after "Predictably Irrational" or "Microtrends" will amplify and clarify many of the general conclusions.

Solid Content, Robotic Narration

This book is still worth consuming despite the robotic narration. I turned it up to 1.25x speed and tolerated it.

Super interesting book

although the narrator is not very good or fluent the content of the book is really good.
it has very interesting discoveries in terms of cultural differences between countries in America, Europe and Asia.

Absolutely fascinating

An incredible book that has turned me into a huge Dr. Rapaille fan.

The reader was absolutely horrible though, he sounded more like a robot than SIRI! It’s worth suffering through regardless, the content is so good!

Good on understanding other people's beliefs.

Easy listening with good structure. Good book to learn how to view other cultures beliefs.

Added to my favorites

Amazingly thought provoking and is worthy of a discussion at any table. Extremely rational approach to divide the world

Brilliant content but poor performance.

The content shared in this book is absolutely brilliant but the performance is very unnatural. It feels like a robot reading the book (and probably it is!)
Once you get used to it it's ok though.

almost...

almost was great. deals mainly on american culture and doesn't go into enough depths about European and Asian cultures. It's great if you want to understand American thinking, but not so much for 'people around the world'

Global approach...

The book would have gotten straight 5 stars, only if it would have had less American patriotism and more a global perspective.

one of my current top 10 non-fiction books

I wasn't a fan of the narrator at first but I warmed up to him. it probably helped that the book was so well written and contained resources that really change your thinking.