Crack This Code

Rapaille ditched his autism research. "I realized working with a business environment was fantastic because they were implementing my theories, and I could see my theories in action with the results right away," he says. Indeed, his consulting snowballed--L'Oréal, Johnson & Johnson, and Renault sought him out. French president Pompidou, he says, asked him to crack the code for nuclear energy.

The project Rapaille flaunts most avidly is his work on Chrysler's PT Cruiser, the retro sedan introduced to acclaim in 1999. Rapaille says he advised Chrysler to design something people would either love or hate. To be "on code" across different cultural markets, he says, Chrysler connected with America's "I do" ethos via an aggressive Al Capone design, and with the "I think" psyche of France by marketing the Cruiser as infused with "ideas"-- like a luggage area that can be converted into a table. ("I discover the code, and--bingo!--the car sells like crazy.")

Talk to Chrysler, though, and it sounds as if Rapaille is inflating his contributions. "Absolutely he was involved… as one form of validating our design," says Sam Locricchio, a Chrysler spokesman. "But to take full credit for sales and success is not correct." Chrysler isn't the only one to call Rapaille out. Douglas Rushkoff, author of Get Back in the Box, says Rapaille's persona eerily echoes that of Ernest Dichter, a psychologist from Europe who in the 1950s introduced marketers to psychoanalytical techniques out of his lavish New York estate. "The thing that makes Clotaire so striking to me is how closely he modeled his whole pitch on Dichter and how well his technique works on marketers," says Rushkoff. "He appeals to these executives on the most base level of their most childlike needs for comfort and authority and a sweet, eccentric French uncle."

Rapaille, clearly irritated by the comparison, says that, though similar, Dichter's work was rooted in the individual unconscious while "I'm speaking about the universal collective unconscious." In any case, he has little time or patience for such criticism. His latest book, The Culture Code (Broadway Books) will appear in June. He plans to start a university (online, that is--and outsourced to India) where anyone can become a code-cracking aficionado. And he lets on that he's developing a television show where he'd crack the codes of individuals--everyone from Madonna to Bono. "This," he says, "is why I love Amer-ee-kha!"

Rapaille picks me up on Manhattan's 42nd Street in his silver PT Cruiser, sporting one black driving glove. It has been more than a month since we parted ways in Mumbai, the last stop of the Indian code-cracking journey.

"He latched onto an idea many years ago, and it was a damn good one. And he's milking it."

The mood among his clients during that trip's final days had swung between optimistic and skeptical. A few who had traveled with him before tried to reassure doubtful newcomers that Rapaille finishes strong (the "Indian code" won't be unveiled until March, and then only for clients). Others hypothesized that Rapaille concocts the code before he even hits the road and just drags everyone along for show. "Ze cheese is dead!" (a hyperbolic finding for Danone that cracked the American code for le fromage) became an inside joke after Rapaille retold the anecdote relentlessly. "I think he's an amazing bullsh--ter," says one exec. "He's got some talent, but… he latched onto an idea X many years ago, and it was a damn good one, and he's milking this one idea for all it's worth."

"Ready for the anthropological journey?!" Rapaille asks, stepping on the gas. He's whisking me away to Jackson Heights in Queens to demonstrate how he "opens the file"--his way of verifying the structures of the culture through every angle of Indian life: from Bollywood to birth rates. If the code is correct, he says, you should be able to find evidence everywhere. Otherwise, "you have the wrong code."

We arrive in Queens, and Rapaille lurches to a stop at a generic shop named Roosevelt Gift Bags and Luggage. He darts inside for a minute, then returns. "The Chinese guy told me 74th Street. That's where the Indians are!" A few blocks later, he finally spots a Himalayan restaurant and we park along a strip dotted with Sikh jewelry stores, sari shops, and restaurants. He hops out of the Cruiser. "See the turbans," he says, pointing. "Red, green, blue…"

In a supermarket, he wanders the aisles, touching bags of spices and rice as if trying to divine a Ouija board. Then we enter a sari shop, where he asks the salesgirl to show him a Sikh wedding dress. "My wife would love this," he smiles. As we pass jewelry shops, he keeps pointing out, "See Ganesha; Ganesha is always in the window!"