These later posts still think that success comes from ‘good work’ and our criticisms are jealousy. Come on! You do not get noticed by CEO’s and presidents for doing ‘breakthrough’ work. You have to be ‘somebody’ or at least pass yourself off as a ‘somebody’.

Just look at the trajectory of his career – it doesn’t add up. Long time ago some kid at a Rapaille lecture is Switzerland told his father (director at Nestle). Rapaille didn’t even know what consumer research was yet was awarded a contract to ‘figure out’ why the Japanese wouldn’t drink coffee…His answer? Cause they don’t smell it/taste it when they are kids!! His solution? Sell coffee flavoured ice cream for a few decades! Is that a joke?? No – it’s the start of a very famous career. Sorry – sounds like bullshit to me.

I believe he’s made you all jealous and as a result you feel that the Fortune 500 companies that hire him are somehow making “dumb” business decisions despite the amazing successes they have had as a result of his work.

If you want to move up in the business world, learn from those who have been more financially successful than you. Don’t throw them off. After all, they are more financially successful than you. Jealousy gets you no where.

Very insightful, indeed.
The Vietnamese lady who does my wife’s nails came up with the exact same words the other day.
“America is Dream”
Maybe she should charge 250k the hour.

“Rapaille insights on cultures were very genuine, fresh.”

Which ones again? That Americans perceive cars as “power”symbols, whereas Germans are primarily concerned with engineering? (I just got that one from the brilliant book “The culture code”)
Again, very insightful.
So insightful that I am totally stunned.

Any researcher / planner on this blog knows that the only limitation to insightful research is.. $$$$$!
Sure, qualitative research is far more interesting and potent than quantitative research. Sure, you get better results when you can sample 250 people for each focus group session, and run sessions three times in a row. Sure, you have the potential to do half a decent job if the client is willing to dish out 250k $ to crack a cultural “archetype”.

And if you have the intellectual ability to read the first 20 pages of any Carl Jung’s book, grap couple of fancy terms, over-simplify them, regurgitate them with a French accent, and take full credit for them .. You are on your way to become a market research superstar!

Come on, people.
You can’t possibly be serious..

In response to the gloriously vapid comments posted by an accomplished Anonymous on this blog:

“(…) He is a living embodiment of the worst characteristics of the french version of the white male (suffisance and obnoxious pseudo-intellectualism)”

Well.. Raspaille surely is the living embodiment of “THE” Frenchness consistent with American overly simplistic and culturally “coded”(ahem) stereotypes, as far as Frenchness goes.

Of course, this kind of Frenchness can’t resonate NOR sell in France itself, since it is the quintessential “americanized Frenchness” that can only sell.. in the United-States!

(Could it possibly be the reason, why Raspaille left his bhome country to sell for millions of dollars French pseudo scientifico / analytico / ethnographico intellectualism to gullible Americans? I wonder.. )

Raspaille has never been considered as a serious reference in French market research, sorry to bring the bad news. He is a joke.
But quite a marvelous expert at selling French (non)expertise anywhere but France

Funny that marketing/ ad professionals always get upset, when caught in their own game.

Raspaille sells nothing more insipid than Kevin Roberts’ gloriously vapid theory on consumers’ emotional connections with brands. (Thanks Kevin for hammering such commonplaces for 200 pages! Nobody knew that brand connections were primarily emotional..)
Marketing is, indeed, the art of selling wind with conviction (and pseudo science)

Raspaille’s notion of cultural code is a common place in anthropology & social sciences. Worse than a common place, it is the basic of all basics! Anybody with a half a brain (no PhD required, sorry) has heard about it. It has been researched & analyzed for over 5 decades! (See Hofstede’s studies on cultural dimensions)

Congratulations Raspaille! You managed to sell
wind to the wind-blowing experts themselves! US marketing gurus buying wind from a French wind-blowing super brand! Who said simplicity sells well again? French simplicity seems to sell even better

When a student first mentioned Rapaille’s championing of the reptilian brain, I felt repulsed. I still do. Should we not try, as humans, to overcome baser instincts?

I’ll tell you why..

The guy is obsessed with the Reptilian brain. He talks about the human reptilian nature incessantly. Read his books. The word reptilian is virtually on every page. He teaches companies to talk to and encourage the reptilian impulses in all of us. That is the small part of our brain that is obsessive, ritualistic, aggressive, hierarchical and deceptive. The reptilian brain is devoid of emotion or compassion or empathy. He encourages our ‘primal’ nature which is exactly what the global business elite (and now I’m talking absolute top end of the freemasonic elite) want. They don’t want us to be compassionate, thinking or feeling human beings. They literally want us to behave in ways that are deviod of emotion and simply act on primal instincts – to consume mercilessly, endlessly and slavishly – until we are so in debt that we are mere serfs to their credit. That has already been achieved by the way..

So is it any wonder that Rapaille’s newletters spout all kinds of Orwellian doublespeak like “there is no war in Iraq” (yes Rapaille actually said that!!). Or that a serial mass murderer like George W Bush is president because he is ‘on code’ with American culture. What bullshit! He is president because his brother rigged the Florida election and then because of 9-11 (which most credible researchers and journalists now claim was engineered by the white house itself).

Yes Rapaille is a brilliant brilliant man. But make no mistake. This guy has sold his soul to the devil for a few mansions and a bunch of cars. He has a strange demeanour and dresses like some kind of medieval aristocratic about to participate in a secret pagan ritual.

Rapaille is an unwitting (perhaps) propagandist with esoteric knowledge about the workings of the human psyche and brain. Don’t be fooled. He did NOT discover this on his own by working with autistic kids (as he claims). Thousands of patient people work with autistic kids. But strangely Rapaille goes from that humble occupation (usually reserved for the unambitious lowly paid psychologist and counsellor) to working directly with the top people at Nestle and then almost immediately, it seems, many other companies. He has never worked in a research agancy or an ad agency or inside a marketing organisation. He claims not even to eb a marketing researcher (that is too lowly for him). Think about it…

I’m no bleeding heart liberal but this guy does not add up. I’m a huge fan of his codes but that stuff alone does not make you famous or wealthy. In fact most marketers react to him in the same way that you all have – unless, that is, their CEO tells them to listen to this guy! There is more than likely a hidden agenda here.

Rigas was right – Rapaille is a continuation of the Bernays/Dichter dynasty both of whom used Freudian insight (particularly of the ID) to manipulate the minds of Americans to accept impulsive and incessant consumerism as their new god. Dichter’s wife Heddy said that Ernest thought consumerism made people happy!! When we all know for a fact that it has exactly the opposite effect. Dichter was a brilliant man. He knew exactly what he was doing. BTW Dichter was reputedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars as well! Not bad for a ‘researcher’.

Rapaille is not part of the elite. But like people such as Frank Luntz he is close enough to it to smell what real power means and will do and say almost anything to get a whif of it.

You are all researchers and social commentators. Take off your self important blinkers and look through the smokescreen and be conscious of what you are doing.

“French people see cheese as alive. Americans see cheese as something that is dead, and needs to be kept in little plastic body bags in the refrigerator, which is a morgue.”