The Culture Code (20 page)

The Code helps explain why teenagers are fascinated with alcohol. At that age, flirting with danger is especially appealing because you feel invulnerable. What better way to prove your invincibility than to play with guns?

Marketing alcohol in America is a dicey business, as liquor companies need to walk a line between being on Code and turning off a large audience (whose cortexes tell them that drinking to excess is socially unacceptable and inherently dangerous), being constructively off Code, and being off Code entirely.

Using gun imagery certainly appeals to youth; Captain Morgan rum seems to be pitching its product in this direction. The pirate on the Captain Morgan bottle wields a sword instead of a gun, but the message is largely the same. Colt .45 malt liquor has found tremendous success within the hip-hop culture, connecting a product with the name of a gun to a community saturated with violent lyrics.

The malt liquor St. Ides took this even further. They created a series of ads using as their spokespeople hip-hop artists, several of whom drew an explicit connection between alcohol and guns. Eric B. and Rakim called St. Ides “bold like a Smith & Wesson.” Rappers Erick and Parrish called on their cronies to “hit the bozak [gun] while I take a sip.”

Anheuser-Busch promoted Busch beer to outdoorsmen via in-store displays of inflatable Labrador retrievers and banners decorated with scenes of ducks flying above Busch beer cans. They distributed an “Official Busch Hunting Gear” catalog, complete with camouflage beer holders and a floating gun case with the brand’s logo.

Earlier, we discussed how advertisers succeed in using fantasy sex to sell their products because of America’s fascination with fantasy violence. The proliferation of liquor ads selling sex completes a triangle. The sexual images send unconscious messages of violence, putting the ads on Code for a product that also generates violent messages in our unconscious.

Corona Beer, on the other hand, seems to be making an effort to go constructively off Code in its advertising. Corona ads are filled with soothing images (beaches, palm trees, and so on) with the tagline “Miles away from ordinary.” The message here is of transformation, but not a violent one.

Sadly, marketing alcohol by selling quality of crafsmanship seems entirely off Code. It appeals to a small American subculture, in the same way that food magazines appeal to American foodies, but it will never capture the mass market.

A
NICE
MEAL
AND
A
BOTTLE
OF
WINE
, ANYONE?

The Codes for food and alcohol take us back to one of the recurring themes in our culture: we love things that help us get our jobs done and we fear things that get in the way. All human beings need food to survive. Task-oriented Americans take this literally, regarding food as the fuel to drive their ever-running engines. Alcohol, by contrast, makes you relaxed at best, drunk at worst—neither of which enhances our missions. It is therefore not surprising that we perceive alcohol as something dangerous or even deadly.

As for pleasure, it doesn’t make even a fleeting appearance in either of these Codes. It’s tough to take time for pleasure when you’ve got a job to do.

The Codes for Shopping and Luxury

W
e have seen in the Codes the power of the reptilian brain at work. Yet even when we allow our reptilian brains to guide us, we still make an effort to appease our cortexes. To do so, we make use of alibis.

Alibis give “rational” reasons for doing the things we do. Think about some of the earlier Codes we’ve addressed. Our alibi for abstaining from casual sex is that we fear for our reputations or we fear sexually transmitted diseases, but our unconscious tells us that we fear violence. Our alibi for getting fat is that we love food or that our schedules don’t allow us to eat in a healthy manner, but our unconscious knows that we’re checking out.

Alibis make us feel better about what we do because they feel logical and socially acceptable. Whenever I present a client with a Code, I also present him with an alibi or two gleaned from the discovery sessions. These are important to the client, because an effective marketing campaign needs to consider the alibis while addressing the Code. For instance, a food packager who focused only on the effectiveness of the fuel in its product without also suggesting that the product tasted good would leave an important selling point unstated. Alibis address the “conventional wisdom” about an archetype, the kind of thing you are likely to hear in a focus group. While you can’t
believe
what people say, it would be a mistake not to
listen to
it and incorporate it into your message.

At a personal level, an alibi often has credibility even if it is not the reason why a person does what he does. Your schedule really might make it difficult for you to eat as well as you should. It isn’t the reason you’re fat, but once you address why you are checking out, you still need to come up with an eating plan that accommodates your hours. Just as companies need to consider both the Code and the alibi, so do individuals. Any long-held excuse has at least a modicum of validity. On this point, the alibis for shopping and luxury are highly instructive.

TAKING
A
TRIP
TO
THE
REST
OF
THE
WORLD

When Procter & Gamble commissioned a discovery on shopping, the alibis quickly emerged. Throughout the sessions, women repeatedly said that they shopped to buy goods for themselves and their families and that they liked going shopping because it gave them the opportunity to discover the best products to purchase. This is very logical and exactly what one might expect to hear. It is practical. Households need food and clothing, laundry detergent and toilet paper. Going to the local shopping center to buy these things is an efficient way to compare products and supply your home with the best you can afford.

Still, this is only an alibi.

In the third hour of the sessions, when the participants relaxed and remembered their first imprint and their most important and most recent memories of shopping, the message behind the alibi began to emerge.

My first memory of shopping was going to the mall with my mother when I was six or seven and seeing my best friend, Lisa, there. While our mothers did whatever they were doing, Lisa and I wandered around behind them, looking at all of the stuff we wanted to buy and pretending to try on grown-up clothes. After that, we made our mothers buy us lunch together. I cried when we had to go home.

—a thirty-year-old woman

Nothing will be more powerful to me than the first time I got to go to the mall with my friends and without my mother. I was twelve at the time and I convinced my mother to let me ride the bus downtown with two of my school friends. We ran into another bunch of girls from school while we were there and spent the entire day looking at everything—including things in stores we could never afford. The mall had this big seating area and we hung out there for a while as well just talking about boys and other people we knew.

—a twenty-seven-year-old woman

After my first child was born, I had to stay in bed for a while due to complications from the birth. My sister stayed with me during this time and she did all the shopping, cooking, and cleaning. I really appreciated it, but I also really felt shut in. A couple of days after my sister went home, I went to the store for the first time. I was a bit nervous about this, because I hadn’t been out in a public place with my son yet and I didn’t know what to expect. I had visions of him crying uncontrollably while I tried to pick out something for dinner. When we got into the store, though, he was an absolute angel. People kept coming up to look at him and I felt very proud. We wound up rolling up and down the aisles and I got enough food for the week. It felt so good to be up and around again.

—a thirty-eight-year-old woman

A couple of weeks ago, my best friend and I drove an hour and a half to go to a new mall that just opened. It was the most amazing place I’ve ever seen. It had hundreds of stores, a huge food court, a twenty-theater multiplex, and even a Ferris wheel. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. We couldn’t think of where to start. Everything I wanted—and a lot of things I didn’t know I wanted—was right there.

—a forty-eight-year-old woman

A few years ago, my husband’s company moved us to “middle-of-nowhere” North Carolina. We had a beautiful house in a town with lovely people, but I had to drive a hundred miles just to find a decent shoe store—which I did on a regular basis. Six months ago, he was transferred back to Philadelphia. Our house isn’t as nice as the house was in North Carolina, but the shopping is glorious. I feel like I’ve returned to the real world.

—a fifty-five-year-old woman

The content of these stories varied in details (running around with friends, taking a baby out for the first time, driving a hundred miles for good shopping), but the
structure
of the stories bore a consistent theme: “I cried when we had to go home.” “We spent the entire day looking at everything—including things in stores we could never afford.” “It felt so good to be up and around again.” “I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.” “I feel like I’ve returned to the real world.” There was a sense in these stories that shopping was a joyous, uplifting enterprise, edifying in ways far beyond purchases made or products handled. Shopping was an emotional, rewarding, and necessary experience.

The American Culture Code for shopping is
RECONNECTING
WITH
LIFE
.

This is the real message behind the alibi. Yes, we shop because we need things, but shopping is more than a means of meeting material needs. It is a social experience. It is a way for us to get out of our homes and back into the world. It is something we can do with friends and loved ones. It is a way for us to encounter a wide variety of people and learn what’s new in the world—new products, new styles, and new trends—beyond what we see on television. We go shopping, and it seems as though the entire world is there.

This Code taps into the adolescent component of our culture. We all want to “go out and play.” We aren’t going to learn anything sitting alone at home. Only when we go out into the world do we discover anything new about life.

The Code is present in an image of an early era in our culture that has achieved mythic power. In frontier days, women spent most of their time at the homestead, running the household. Their trips into town to buy groceries and other goods often supplied their only contact with other people—their one chance to reconnect with life.

Interestingly, while buying is the alibi many of us use when we go shopping, there is a significant difference, in the American mind, between shopping and buying. Buying is about carrying out a specific mission—purchasing groceries, picking up a book you saw on television, getting your kid new sneakers. It is a task. Shopping, on the other hand, is a wondrous experience filled with discovery, revelation, and surprise.

When the Internet revolution began, pundits suggested that online shopping would spell the demise of brick-and-mortar stores. E-commerce is certainly a burgeoning segment of the marketplace (according to a recent report, dollars spent online increased 31 percent from June 2004 to May 2005), but it was a rare retailer that went out of business because its customers shifted over to the Internet. In fact, many of the most powerful online retailers are those that also have a significant presence in the brick-and-mortar world. Nearly 40 percent of all online sales come from the websites of traditional retailers, more than any other category of store. Consumers like the synergy between the buying they can do online and the shopping they can do at a retail outlet. In a discovery done for a major American retailer, participants corroborated this in both the first and third hours.

This makes perfect sense. The Internet fulfills our need to perform the task of buying, allowing us either to make a purchase online or do the research necessary to comparison-shop and learn more about a product. For instance, people learn a great deal about cars online, including the price the dealer pays, but though they can actually complete the purchase via the Internet, overwhelmingly they choose to go to a dealership instead. Haggling and “beating” the dealer with their research is an integral part of the exercise. While it offers convenience and flexibility, the Internet cannot provide the kind of shopping experience that Americans want. It doesn’t allow us to get out into the world and reconnect with life.

While shopping is wondrous and life-affirming, buying sends a very different unconscious message, especially to women. Buying signals the end of shopping, the point at which you sever your connection with the world and go back home. While you are shopping, you have access to myriad choices. When you buy, you narrow your choices down to one. I used to be amazed and frustrated by the sight of my wife shopping for three hours, making dozens of selections, and then deciding after all that time to purchase nothing. With my new glasses, though, I understand this perfectly. She was after the reconnection, not the product, and when she decided not to buy, her alibi for going shopping again in the near future—that she still needed the product—remained.

Retailers need to consider this shopping/buying tension. If women dread the checkout line because it signals the end of the shopping experience, then stores need to revolutionize the buying experience. Retailers need to find a way to enable their customers to avoid this symbolic end of the shopping day, perhaps by registering their credit card information when they enter the store. The consumer can then walk out with whatever she wants and sensors will record the purchase. If the retailer also has a very liberal return policy, the consumer will feel as if the shopping experience never really ends—she can take home the items that interest her without the melancholy of checking out, “live with them” for a few days, and then return whatever she doesn’t need. This even offers the consumer an alibi for returning to the store. Nordstrom has based part of its reputation on its willingness to take items back with no questions asked. They’ve turned shopping into an open-ended experience.