By Edith McClintock
Rapaille gives the example of Nestlé instant coffee in
Japan. The Japanese prefer tea and in the 1970s did not have a culture of
drinking coffee, much less instant coffee. So Nestlé created a connection in
the culture by starting with kids, selling them coffee flavored candy without
caffeine in the hope they would grow into their instant coffee. And not just in
Japan. Instant coffee is now ubiquitous throughout the world—last year when I
was in Georgia, Nestlé commercials aired non-stop, nearly convincing me instant
coffee doesn’t taste like plastic.
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| Satirical cartoon from 1885 about the selling of American symbols. |
Growing up I never considered myself particularly American.
I’d spent my early years on a commune in Tennessee and then moved to Miami, a
city where the majority of residents are born outside the country. It wasn’t
until my twenties, when I moved abroad, that I realized I was undeniably,
culturally American. But then most of my life story (utopia, immigration) had actually
been very much on point for the cultural archetype of the American Dream.
But what does this mean for advertising and marketing you
might ask?
The Dream is the subconscious “cultural code” for America,
similar to Joseph Campbell’s idea of universal archetypes within the world’s myths. This is according to a book called the Culture Code by a French man, Clotaire Rapaille. Rapaille researches
and uses the unconscious meanings we apply to certain words, our emotional
connection to things, to relationships, and uses them to sell us products,
experiences, and even people. The idea of the American Dream might seem
obvious, but then so too does the connection between marketing and emotions.
And yet it works, even when we know.
The culture we are raised in absolutely affects how we act
and react to the world. But more important for the transnational corporations
that sell the world, it matters in terms of what we buy, why we buy, and where
we buy. Even how we vote. If we vote.
According to Rapaille, most of our unconscious emotional
connections are formed by the age of seven, which means there are probably many
common American cultural codes to which I can’t relate. Food is one. He tells
the story of the difference between cheese in France and America. In the U.S.
cheese is dead. In France it’s alive. As these are the culture codes for
cheese, according to him anyway, it means Americans want their cheese
pasteurized and wrapped and kept cold while the French want their cheese unpasteurized
and kept in a protective container in the open air.
So what happens if you’re raised vegan, like me? Do I have
no emotional connection to cheese? Am I immune to cheesy advertisements? Nope. Marketers
are experts at selling their goods or services to cultures with no emotional
connection to a product. They simply create one, sometimes over generations.
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| Nestlé might have paved the instant coffee way, but Starbucks Via is coming for them. |
What he doesn’t mention is that in the 1970s Nestlé was also
promoting the use of infant formula to mothers across the world, including in many
of the poorest countries. In that too they were successful, even in convincing poverty-stricken
mothers to defy logic and pay to buy formula rather than use their healthier,
free breast milk.
My parents, in their youthful wisdom, didn’t allow me to
watch commercials on television when I was young, and I still don’t when I have
a choice. I flip the channel or turn off the sound when a commercial comes on,
but more because they annoy me than any hope of escaping advertisements. Marketers
have moved beyond mere commercials and billboards or radio ads to using product
placement in movies, on sports teams or arenas, through viral videos, Pinterest,
Facebook tagging or liking of products, and always chasing the cool, the community
influencers.
My three-year-old nephew, who has never seen a traditional
commercial in his life, is already inundated in marketing because he has seen Disney and Pixar movies, even
Sesame Street. And these are as much commercials as anything else. He recently told
me he wanted to see the boy we were reading about in a book “up on the TV”,
that he wanted the car shown in the picture book. Unfortunately for him, it was
a rare book with no additional commercial tie-ins.
The aim is always to make us buy more, but the most
successful marketers do it in a way that we think it is our own idea. Our own
real desire.
It doesn’t stop with buying things. Marketing is also used to
influence the way we vote, although that too is connected to what we buy. As
just one example, in 2010, General Electric (G.E.), the world’s third largest
public company, a company that made $5 billion from U.S. operations selling movies
and television shows and light bulbs, etc, paid $0 in taxes according to The New
York Times. That doesn’t happen by accident. It comes from lobbying,
supporting politicians, and getting them to pass beneficial tax laws.
Politicians too have much to sell, starting with themselves.
This works for President Obama as his life story is the American Dream. Or so his books, titled Dreams from my Father and The
Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream seem to claim. His
campaign taglines are Hope (2008) and Forward (2012). He’s saying Americans are
optimistic, always looking to the future. Simple. Obvious. Right? It’s what we
already believe. I bought it. I’ll do it again, too.
Mitt Romney’s book—as it seems all presidential aspirants in
the U.S. must now have one—is titled: No
Apology: The Case for American Greatness. What Romney leaves out is his own
life story. Not his business background, but his religion, his family’s history
as founders of the Mormon Church. In my view, it wouldn’t hurt him to talk
about his religion as Mormons are nothing if not quintessentially, born and
bred, utopian American Dreamers—and unlike those hippies, they’re clean-cut and
polite.
Better yet, according to Rapaille, Americans are looking for
a Moses symbol in their President—a rebellious leader who will lead them out of
trouble. Well, we all know Obama was Moses in 2004, but did you know Moses visited and blessed Joseph Smith and
all Mormons as leaders of America in 1863? I'm paraphrasing slightly, but I think Smith had a strong grasp of this concept of codes and unconscious
emotional connections.
Romney’s campaign tagline is: “We have a moral
responsibility not to spend more than we take in.” It’s a nice idea, but is it
good marketing? It doesn’t seem to translate culturally in a place like Miami,
which is flat and warm, yet the car of choice is a gigantic Cadillac Escalade
that sells for over $63,000. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to convince Miamians
they need to save energy, buy more efficient cars, walk to work, but to my
everlasting regret it rarely works. (What does? Higher gas prices.)
The truth is most likely Romney’s campaign messaging is
right on code. He’s simply selling to a segment of America with a very different
cultural code than my own, a very different idea of what the American Dream
means.
If you think you aren’t persuadable, that you know why you
buy things, why you vote for one candidate over another, why you like a
particular musician or book, watch these two Frontline specials on PBS: The Persuaders and the The Merchants of Cool. They’re
available online. You might just change your mind.
For more, visit my author website and/or personal blog, A Wandering Tale. Even better, order a copy of Monkey Love & Murder on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or the Book Depository (free shipping nearly anywhere in the world).
For more, visit my author website and/or personal blog, A Wandering Tale. Even better, order a copy of Monkey Love & Murder on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or the Book Depository (free shipping nearly anywhere in the world).
