The Reptilian Code

Dr. Rapaille is a market research guru who has been contracted by a large number of companies to figure out the hidden desires of consumers. Companies like Accura or Boing have commissioned him to break the code on luxury for example. He says that most of the time people have no idea of why they are doing what they are doing; he says as well that they are going to try to make up something that makes sense. This is why he explains in the movie that he doesn’t believe what people say.

As a former psychiatrist he explains that there are unconscious associations for barely any product we buy deep in our brains. The first time we imprint the meaning of a word we create a mental connection. He says that there is a code behind every individual decisions and this is why he has developed a 3-stage technique to find out what patterns drive people to consume. The stages are the followings:

1.     Past reason

2.     Through emotion

3.     To the primal core (where interesting decisions really lie)

In the first step, the past reason, he lets people say what they think about the topic that is luxury in the example of the video. He actually doesn’t care much about what they say but does it because he says that like to show how intelligent we are. In this way, the attendants to the focus group go to the break thinking that they made a good job about the topic they where talking about as Dr. Rapaille has just listened what they said.

Then, after the break, he tells to the focus group members to tell him a story. Doing this, he pushes the crowd into the emotion. They are mindset different in this step, they stop being logical or intelligent to just play the role Dr. Rapaille has asked them to play. In this step the focus group members don’t understand anymore what they are doing, and that’s what he is just trying. Now they are more vulnerable and open.

The third and last step, Rapaille is hunting for the primal urges (the reptilian hot buttons that compel us to actions). As he says, the reptilian always win, he try’s to take people to a stage in where they are not thinking anymore, they are not trying to be intelligent, they just take from them the inner code that was imprinted in their minds. He wants to take out the mental connection people have to a specific word or idea.

Summing up the 3-stage technique, the objective is to reduce consumers to the primal impulses. An example of Rappaile findings could be the difference to sell cheese to French or Americans. For French people, the cheese is alive and that is why they don’t put it in the fridge. In the other hand, for Americans cheese is dead. You can’t approach to both consumers the same way and that’s why they have to wrap up in plastic something not imaginable for French consumers.

About the experience Song airlines is trying to create I think it’s a good idea but they take it a little bit to far. They tried not just to create a brand and a product but also a life style around the name of Song. One thing they did well was how to make the image out of their brand and how to sell it to their target market. People, as they say in The Persuaders movie, respond very well to de advertising and feel identified with it. In this way they get people attention. But there is a really negative part in how Song sell themselves to their prospects, as although identifying with the brand a lot of them didn’t know what they where talking about. Possible consumers didn’t identify Song with an airplane company. Another thing they could have done better is the part of the TV advertising media. It’s a good way to get to consumers directly and it took them a little bit too much time and money to take it to the small screen.

To conclude, I just want to mark out that we must have in the top of our heads that the final objective is to sell a product, and if the product doesn’t penetrate in the minds of the consumers there is no point in trying to create a specific branding or lifestyle around it.