The Persuaders

Dr. Rapaille is known as the “Marketing Guru” to many Fortune 500 companies. These companies strongly believe in Dr. Rapaille’s ability to reveal consumer’s unconscious desires. While it may seem ridiculous for a company to invest millions of dollars based on Dr. Rapaille’s ideology, his method has proven effective. For example, in the movie The Persuaders Dr. Rapaille claims credit for the success of the Cadillac SUV. Originally, Cadillac did not market their SUVs correctly;thus, they were not selling. These vehicles were not selling because the product did not meet a consumer need; rather, Cadillac failed to properly identify the need consumers wanted satisfied out of an SUV. As a result, Dr. Rapaille recommended selling domination because his researched showed that consumers where looking for power and strength in an SUV.

To discover what consumers really desire, Dr. Rapaille uses a three-stage technique in his market research. The three stage technique is as follows:

1) Understand the Deep Reasoning Behind People’s Thoughts
2) Examine the Emotional Aspects of those Thoughts
3) Diving into the Primal Core of the True Rationale Used in those Thoughts to Understand Consumer Behavior

In the movie The Persuaders, Dr. Rapaille uses this three stage technique to better understand what consumers are searching for in the word luxury.

The first stage of this technique involves Dr. Rapaille building a level of comfort with the consumer. He gathers a small focus group and asks them to share their thoughts on luxury. In this stage, Dr. Rapaille expects the typical responses people usually say about luxury, such as expensive and ritzy. Additionally, Dr. Rapaille uses this stage to allow the focus group participants a chance to feel good about themselves and feel like they are really contributing to the research.

Once the first stage is completed, Dr. Rapaille is able to continue the other two more important stages. In stage two, the focus groups are asked to dig deeper into themselves and find the emotional feelings they connect with luxury. Specifically, Dr. Rapaille asks the participants to describe luxury to a five year old from another planet. As a result, the participants are forced to dig for the most basic dimensions of the word luxury.

This second stage seems to relate to Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. This three stage technique essentially aims to identify the unconscious thoughts people have about certain products. Without going through all three stages, many individuals tend to tell marketers what they think they want. Dr. Rapaille has realized that what consumers think they want doesn’t always match with the primal core of what consumers subconsciously desire.

After the second stage is completed, the focus group participants are utterly confused as to what they are doing. This confusion is exactly what Dr. Rapaille wants because it encourages the participants to step out of their comfort zones and share their true feelings. To further help this process, Dr. Rapaille has all the chairs removed from the room and the lights turned off. Once the lights are turned back on, Dr. Rapaille believes the participants are in a vulnerable state and ready to share their deeper primal urges. He believes that many of these deeper urges lie dormant unless the participants all go through this complete three stage process. After completing this process, Dr. Rapaille is able to understand the so called Reptilian Code of consumer decision making. This Reptilian Code is basically the unconscious desires consumers have for a certain product and/or service.

In addition to explaining the three stage technique used by Dr. Rapaille, The Persuaders describes an all new Delta airline known as Song Airlines. This airline aims to compete with other airlines in a whole new way. Specifically, it plans to compete on the experience of flying Song. Also, the airlines planes to primarily appeal to women because this segment is generally ignored in the airline industry.

Overall, I feel like this Airline is a little too far ahead of its time. Eventually, I think all airlines will have to switch to this strategy, but right now I think most consumers still look for cheap rates when flying. Thus, it’s important to express these reasonable rates to consumers in marketing programs. No matter the product, all business must remember that they cannot succeed unless they meet a consumer need. At this time, consumers desire cheap rates. While creative, Song marketing programs failed to show consumers how they satisfied this need.

The best example of Song being too forward thinking comes from the movie The Persuaders. In one scene, a man comes to a Song store in a mall completely confused. He does not know that Song is an airline. As a result, he does not seem interested in flying song because he appears frustrated with the ambiguity of the company. Thus, I think Song poorly launched their new form of flying. While the marketing program should create buzz, it should not create frustration. I think the Song airline created negative feelings towards flying Song because consumers had no idea what product/service Song offered.

With that said, I think Song did a great job in creating a Song culture. The training ensured that all employees associated with Song gave off a similar message. This similar message is vital to creating a new brand. Through these well trained employees, Song ensured consistency in their brand image. In that sense, Song actually reminds me of Disney in the way that they make sure all guest receive the exact same type of service experience.