The Culture Code (22 page)

In addition, one must always remember that we need our alibis. Our cultural unconscious will lead us to respond positively to luxury items that offer us “stripes,” but our cortexes must be satisfied as well. We’ll buy a $4,000 professional cooktop, but only if you convince us that it will make our kitchen more functional. We’ll spend an extra $200 a day for spa services in our four-star hotel, but only if you convince us that we’ll emerge refreshed and ready to resume our mission.

Certain industries have skillfully connected alibis to luxury items. Corporate jets are an utterly luxurious way to travel, but the leasing companies understand that we need an alibi. Therefore, they underscore how much time busy executives save by using a corporate jet, how those executives can use that time to work, and how the environment the leasing company creates on the jets allows executives to keep working.

Earlier, we saw that the diamond industry sells romance on one hand and “investment value” on the other. The latter serves as an attempt to provide an alibi. The notion here is that you’ll be more willing to buy that $10,000 engagement ring if you can tell yourself it will appreciate over time.

AS
LONG
AS I
HAVE
AN
ALIBI
, I’M COVERED

Alibis help us to make sense of the messages the Codes send us. Few of us are aware enough of our motivations to understand that our excitement over that pending shopping trip comes from the reconnection that trip will provide. What we tell ourselves instead is that we
need
things—shoes for an upcoming social event, clothes for the kids’ new school year, a new range before the old one stops working, a new car because the other one is coming off lease. Similarly, few of us acknowledge that we’re buying “stripes” when we buy our luxury items. Instead, the car is for entertaining clients; the built-in swimming pool is for the children and their friends.

Alibis work because they seem legitimate. They give us good reason to do things we want to do anyway. We can reconnect with life. We can exhibit our stripes. And our cortexes won’t give us the least bit of trouble.

The Codes for America in Other Cultures

J
ust as different cultures view various archetypes differently, they also view America according to their own Culture Codes. Understanding the Code for America in different cultures has a huge impact on how a product, a concept, or indeed a foreign policy will be received there. With marketing in mind, a collection of American corporations, including DuPont, Boeing, and Procter & Gamble sought to discover the Code for America in France, Germany, and England.

America has always had its detractors. However, the number and threat level of these detractors seems to have ratcheted up in the early years of the twenty-first century. In a poll by the Pew Research Center released in late June 2005, unfavorable opinions of America ranged from 29 percent in India to 79 percent in Jordan. The majority of those polled in most of our ally countries had an unfavorable opinion of America, including 57 percent in France, 59 percent in Germany, and 59 percent in Spain. The results in strongly Muslim countries, like those in Jordan, were unsurprising, with 77 percent in Turkey and Pakistan and 58 percent in Lebanon having an unfavorable opinion. Ratings were especially low for America when participants were asked about American foreign policy and George W. Bush’s reelection. When asked whether U.S. foreign policy takes into account the interests of others, only 38 percent said yes in Germany and 32 percent in Great Britain, while Poland (13 percent), France (18 percent), Spain (19 percent), and Russia (21 percent) were even more negative. Meanwhile, the majority of those polled in Spain (60 percent), Great Britain (62 percent), France (74 percent), and Germany (77 percent) said they had a less favorable opinion of America after the reelection of George W. Bush.

America’s problems with France in recent years have been well documented. As it happens, the strong sense of anti-Americanism in France (and, specifically, the hatred of George W. Bush) directly relates to the conflicts in the Culture Codes of the two countries. George W. Bush is the quintessential American leader. He’s brash, with a strong adolescent streak, he’s uncultured, he’s an action figure who shoots first and asks questions later, and he’s not concerned with getting things right the first time. The French are thinkers; they believe that intellect and reason provide the answers to big questions. In other words, George W. Bush is the antithesis of everything that guides the French on an unconscious level. It is no mystery that French-American relations are at a historic low. Here is what the French had to say in our discovery:

I keep thinking that Americans are going to fail terribly sometime soon. How can you succeed when you know so little about how the world works? Somehow, though, they tend to wind up on top. It’s a complete mystery to me.

—a forty-year-old French man

The first thing I think of when I think of Americans is the moon landing. That really was a remarkable thing to see. To think that they conquered the bounds of this planet and landed on another is just incredible to me. When I think about that and then I think about how many stupid things they do now, I have trouble making sense of it.

—a sixty-four-year-old French man

I spent a summer in California when I was in college. I went to Disneyland, and Universal Hollywood, and I went to movie studios and took a tour of the stars’ houses. It is so unreal there, but I have to admit it was quite fun. That is America to me.

—a twenty-three-year-old French woman

When I think of America, I think of
Star Wars,
Superman, comic books, and
Star Trek.
The food is terrible, but you have to give them credit for having great imaginations.

—a twenty-seven-year-old French man

Participants in France talked about the confusion that stemmed from their belief that they were supposed to illuminate the world with their ideas but that the Americans were actually doing it. They truly didn’t understand how this was possible. Consistently, participants told of their conviction that we were unfit to lead the world, but then grudgingly acknowledged our ability to learn from mistakes and come back stronger. When asked for their first imprint of America, many mentioned our landing on the moon, while others spoke of Hollywood, fantasy, toys, and imagination. They characterized us as childlike and naïve, but powerful at the same time. When the French spoke of Americans, it was almost as though they were speaking about an alien race.

The Code for America in France is
SPACE
TRAVELERS
.

Knowledge of the Code helps put several things into perspective. That the French see us as intergalactic voyagers explains why they feel they can’t relate to us, why they think our motivations are different from theirs. In addition, it helps explain why they see us as usurpers. In their minds, we’ve landed on their world and are trying to impose our culture and our values on them; and because we are “travelers,” we don’t have the same commitment to the well-being of the planet that they have. How could we really know what is important for humanity when we are not fully human?

In Germany, participants spoke of Americans with a certain sense of fascination:

They do things in such a haphazard fashion. It is almost as though they are forever improvising, just doing the first things that come into their minds. In spite of this, though, I don’t know, it works. They get things done. They have an incredible ability to do the right thing.

—a thirty-six-year-old German man

I saw a lot of American soldiers when I was growing up. People with guns scare me, especially if they aren’t from my country.

Still, they seemed very nice to us, especially the children. They would joke with children and teach them how to act like “good soldiers.” I always found that touching.

—a fifty-seven-year-old German woman

Americans are cowboys. All of them are cowboys. They might wear business suits, but they still act like cowboys. They aren’t as smart or disciplined as we are, but they have an impressive ability to do what they set out to do.

—a fifty-year-old German man

I hate to admit it, but I’m not sure where we’d be without America. They saved us from ourselves in our darkest hour.

—a forty-two-year-old German woman

Like the French, the Germans see us as not being one of them, but they focus more on our accomplishments. They acknowledge that we are powerful leaders and the foremost world authority, but they do so with a sense of disbelief. Germans see themselves as superior in education, engineering, and creating order. They see Americans as primitive, yet they understand that America has been able to do things on a world level that they have not—and this confounds them. One subject that came up repeatedly in the discovery sessions was our friendliness to children. America’s attitude toward its children and the children of the world strikes a resonant chord with Germans. They’ve imprinted us as liberators and benevolent cowboys.

The Code for America in Germany is
JOHN
WAYNE
.

The Code helps explain why American-German relations were so good for so long (in 2000, 78 percent of Germans polled had a favorable opinion of the United States) and why it is strained now. The image of John Wayne is of the strong, friendly stranger who helps save a town from trouble and then moves on with no expectation of thanks or remuneration. John Wayne is a tough guy. He’s “the law.” He never, however, shoots first. In this context, our actions in Iraq are off Code to Germans because they believe that we “shot first” there, embarking on a military response before exhausting all diplomatic solutions.

The English have their own way of seeing us:

I have several American friends. I find them endlessly entertaining. When I go to America, I know I’m going to eat too much, drink too much, stay up too late, and speak twice as loudly as I normally speak. I couldn’t live that way all the time, but it is A
LOT
of fun.

—a thirty-two-year-old English man

Everything about America is big. The country is big, the people are big, their ambitions are
very
big, and their appetite for everything is big. I’ve never been there, but I imagine everyone living in a huge house and driving gigantic cars.

—an eighteen-year-old English woman

It’s easy to think of Americans as somewhat beneath us. Their accents are ridiculous (and they insist on using their voices at such high volume), they all seem like a bunch of bounding children, they consider “history” to be anything that took place in the past decade, and they all weigh too much. If they are beneath us, though, why have they accomplished so much? They seem to understand something we fail to understand.

—a fifty-five-year-old English man

I always know when an American is in my shop. They don’t even have to open their mouths for me to know. It’s in their eyes. Americans want everything.

—a forty-eight-year-old English woman

English participants spoke of us as big, loud, powerful, vulgar, extreme, and determined to win at any cost. They talked about our lack of restraint, our lack of tradition, and our lack of a class system, while at the same time admiring our confidence, passion, record of success, and can-do attitude. When asked to recall their first imprint of America, participants consistently spoke of vastness—the size of the country, the size of its symbols (the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, the Empire State Building), and the size of its influence on the world. In speaking about America, the notion of quantity came up with great regularity.

The English Code for America is
UNASHAMEDLY
ABUNDANT
.

This helps explain why the majority of English polled (55 percent) have a favorable opinion of America (though the proportion is down precipitously from the 83 percent rating in 2000). The English expect us to seek abundance in everything. They expect us to be extreme and to try to win at any cost. Therefore, our present foreign policy is on Code for them.

MAKING
A
PROFITABLE
MARRIAGE

Now that the companies involved in this study had the French, German, and English Codes for America, it was essential that they not run away from their “American-ness” in building a marketing strategy in each culture. If the English expect abundance from Americans, it is important to highlight that. Products should come “fully loaded” and “super-sized.” If the Germans expect John Wayne, products should help “save the day” without asking anyone to change who they are (remember the successful marketing campaign for the Jeep Wrangler, which capitalized on that car’s Code as “liberator”). If the French expect us to be space travelers, then the products we bring them should have an otherworldly quality: they should feel new and unusual.

But knowing the foreign Codes for America still does not ensure success in that market. Any marketing strategy in a foreign culture must also be cognizant of what a culture thinks of itself.

The French Code for France is
IDEA
. Raised on stories of great French philosophers and thinkers, French children imprint the value of ideas as paramount and refinement of the mind as the highest goal.

The English Code for England is
CLASS
. There is a strong sense among the English that they are of a higher social stratum than other people. This arises from England’s long history of world leadership (“the sun never sets on the British Empire”) and from the messages passed down from generation to generation that being English is a special privilege that one receives at birth.