The Global Code

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

For decades, Clotaire Rapaille's work focused on how people's relationships with the most important concepts in their lives--love, health, and money, for instance--are guided by subconscious cultural messages. But recently, he has uncovered a new phenomenon: a "global unconscious," or core values and feelings that are consistent worldwide--the result of our constant interconnectedness. He has also identified a new group who are paving the way for the future of decision-making: the Global Tribe. These individuals are fluent in the language of culture, untied to any notion of nationalism or ideology. They are defining the key values driving our new world economy, with profound implications for how companies market their products and services.

Rapaille takes us on a journey through China, Brazil, India, England and everywhere in between to discover the new standards for luxury, pleasure, technology and education. How can elite brands compete in a world of knockoffs? How can universities maintain their prestige when a cheap master's degree or doctorate is only a click away? We must speak the language of the Global Tribe in order to succeed.

Building on seven years of research, Rapaille analyzes how this new mindset has taken hold in various regions, and how marketers and service providers can tailor their offerings and marketing accordingly. The Global Code is an invaluable glimpse at how our new multi-sphere world is affecting us all.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface (p. ix)
• Introduction The Global Code (p. 1)
• Discovering the Global Mind (p. 9)
• Part 1 The Global Tribe
• 1 Who They Are (p. 33)
• 2 Where They Live (p. 67)
• 3 How They Travel (p. 85)
• Part 2 How They Set the Standards
• 4 The Global Code for Beauty (p. 99)
• 5 The Global Code for Luxury (p. 109)
• 6 The Global Code for Pleasure (p. 131)
• Part 3 Global Codes
• 7 The Global Code for Survival (p. 155)
• 8 The Global Code for Adaptability and Change (p. 165)
• 9 The Global Code for Leadership (p. 175)
• Part 4 The Future of Our Planet
• 10 The Global Code for Higher Education (p. 197)
• 11 The Global Code for Millennial (p. 211)
• 12 The Great Divide: The U-Curve (p. 239)
• Conclusion The Satellite Tribe (p. 251)
• Global Brands, Global Leaders and a Global World (p. 263)
• Acknowledgments (p. 267)
• Homework for the Satellite Tribe (p. 269)
• Dr. Rapaille's Biography (p. 279)
• Notes (p. 281)
• Index (p. 283)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Rapaille (founder, Archetype Discoveries Worldwide; The Culture Code) presents a view of the future that mixes high society and more pedestrian archetypes, with nuances of Lisa Birnbach (The Official Preppy Handbook), Richard Florida (The Rise of the Creative Class), and Faith Popcorn (The Popcorn Report). A psychologist by training, Rapaille offers a cultural anthropological schema of the world based on his corporate research. For the author, the complex is most often underpinned by the very simple. Reptilian needs (food, sex, etc.) are drivers, and once these needs are met, emotional pleasure supplants the physical. To present his broad-based views, Rapaille creates neologisms that capture the essence of his thought. To be sure, the title covers a lot of ground: the elite, politics, bureaucracy, beauty, travel, leadership, and survival are but the tip of the iceberg. VERDICT Intriguing. However, readers of a more academic bent will prefer works by Thomas L. Friedman (The World Is Flat) and Clayton M. Christensen (The Innovators Dilemma). Pass on this one.-Steven Silkunas, Fernandina Beach, FL © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Marketing consultant Rapaille delivers a meandering study of the lives of an elite group of international travelers. Having explored (in The Culture Code) how one's view of the world is affected by one's local culture, here he looks at the prosperous, peripatetic group he calls the "Global Tribe," who share the eponymous global code. At the top of its hierarchy is "the Court," followed closely by their hangers-on, the Courtesans, and trailed by the well-traveled but less well-heeled Satellite Tribe, many of them "military brats." This motley crew exercises great influence on standards for travel, beauty, and luxury around the world, a phenomenon Rapaille has observed in the course of guiding marketers to their targets. This "captain's log from the exploration of the global mind" proves unfortunately choppy and superficial, particularly when covering any global trend or event more meaningful than luxury goods and accommodations (genocide and terrorism, for example, get one paragraph each). While Rapaille's cantankerous tone can be entertaining, this is better read as a collection of fables for jet-setters than as a guide to truly understanding today's tastemakers. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.