Consumer logic: a dialogue with Clotaire Rapaille
from Frontline/PBS, "The Persuaders" airdate: 11/11/04
Much of current consumer and political marketing relies on methods that are essentially the opposite of the kind of small group deliberation that could make a gas tax feasible, even if, as William Ford states, it is the best solution to the problem.
Marketing messages directed at an individual's emotional 'buttons' are meant to bypass deliberation and rational thought (bypassing what the marketing expert Clotaire Rapaille terms 'cortex' thought). Rapaille and the political pollster Frank Luntz (included in link at bottom) seek to persuade individuals through emotion rather than reasoning.
>>> indicates edited transcript. Emphasis at bottom added.
CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: My experience is that most of the time, people have no idea why they're doing what they're doing. They have no idea. So they're going to try to make up something that makes sense. Why do you need a Hummer to go shopping? "Well, you know, in case I need to go off road." Well, you live in Manhattan. Why do you need a four-wheel drive in Manhattan? "Well, you know, sometime I go out and I go in"-- I mean, this is-- you don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand that this is disconnected. This has nothing to do with what the real reason is for people to do what they do. >>>
[Rapaille has 50 of the Fortune 100 companies as clients. He believes all purchasing decisions really lie beyond conscious thinking and emotion and reside at a primal core in human beings. He uses the elemental description of the three parts of the brain, with the reptilian inner core the most primitive (appetite, fear, lust, aggression), next the limbic brain (emotions), lastly the cortex (higher reason).]
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: Are marketing people muddling their messages?
CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: Some people are getting there now. Some people understand the power of the reptilian in a very gutsy way. They don't do all the analysis of the three brains, but [they get it]. For example, the Nextel campaign, "I do, therefore I am." Right, bingo. This is not "I think, therefore I am." And the campaign for the Hummer -- the Hummer is a car with a strong identity. It's a car in a uniform. I told them, put four stars on the shoulder of the Hummer, you will sell better. If you look at the campaign, brilliant. I have no credit for it, just so you know, but brilliant. They say, "You give us the money, we give you the car, nobody gets hurt." I love it! It's like the mafia speaking to you. For women, they say it's a new way to scare men. Wow. And women love the Hummer. They're not telling you, "Buy a Hummer because you get better gas mileage." You don't. This is cortex things. They address your reptilian brain. They appeal to the logic of emotion. Right. This is the connection between the limbic and the reptilian, what I call the logic of emotion, which is how the emotions deal with the urges, the instincts, the needs we have. One example I can think [of] is seduction. I was lucky to study seduction in eight cultures for L'Oréal. I couldn't believe I was paid to do that. It was fantastic. >>>
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: [voice-over] Of course, it's impossible to know if Rapaille's excursions through the collective unconscious really uncover what drives us, whether to Boeing airplanes or any other product. But even if he is onto something, you have to wonder about the net effect of reducing us to our most primal impulses.
[Rushkoff to Rapaille] What about the environment? If the lizard wants the Hummer --
CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: Right.
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: -- then -- and the lizard's not going to listen to the environmentalist --
CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: Right.
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: -- then isn't it our job, as aware people, to get the reptile to shut up and appeal to the cortex, to appeal to the mammal?
CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: Now, you see, the problem is here, is that, if you think, right, the people who want to do good not always do good, all right? So the people that want to do good -- for example, let's say, OK, we need to make smaller cars, right, to protect the environment. Then nobody buys the smaller car. Why? Because they're too small. So then the result is they go into trucks.
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: [voice-over] Looks like I'm not going to win this one. After all, it's hard to argue against the reptilian brain.
CLOTAIRE RAPAILLE: We have to understand the unspoken needs of the people. It works. Good marketing research works. When we say it works, it mean that marketers understand the real need of the customers -- sometime unspoken -- and they deliver. "Give me what I want."
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: "Give us what we want." It is has become the imperative that no corporation -- or any persuader -- can afford to ignore. That's why modern political campaigns have also come to rely on an army of pollsters and market researchers all taking the moment-by-moment pulse of the man on the street.
Frontline, "The Persuaders" [home page]
Frontline, "The Persuaders" [Rapaille interview]
Frontline, "The Persuaders" [program transcript]