Your Customers Don't Experience Your Business. They Experience What Their Brain Tells Them.

Phuket High Season Marketing Series

A long time ago, when I was considerably younger, slightly thinner and, obviously, much more handsome, I spent some time working in France.

I was a watersports and multi-activity instructor in the Dordogne.

And if you've never been to the Dordogne, go.

It's still one of my favourite places in the world.

Beautiful countryside. Rivers. Little French villages. Outdoor activities. Good food. Good wine.

And, apparently, fake gin.

I'll get to that.

Because something happened there more than 30 years ago that I still remember today.

And strangely enough, it explains something incredibly important about marketing.

First, Meet the McGurk Effect

There's a psychological phenomenon called the McGurk effect.

I'm not going to turn this into a psychology lecture, because that's not really the point.

The simple version is this:

What you see can change what you think you hear.

If someone plays you the sound "BA" while showing you a person's mouth making the movement for "GA", your brain can combine those two conflicting signals and make you perceive something completely different.

Your ears are receiving one thing.

Your eyes are receiving another.

And your brain goes:

"Don't worry. I'll sort this out."

Except sometimes it sorts it out incorrectly.

The important bit for marketing isn't the experiment itself.

It's the bigger idea behind it.

We don't experience the world using one signal.

Our brains are constantly combining what we see, hear, smell, feel, remember and expect.

And sometimes expectation is incredibly powerful.

Which brings me back to France.

Three Idiots, a Bottle of Gin and Some Pistachios

We had a day off.

There were three of us: me, a New Zealand guy and a Aussie guy.

We were sitting around in the evening with a bottle of gin and a bag of pistachio nuts.

Nothing particularly exciting.

Just three activity instructors relaxing, talking rubbish and steadily making our way through the gin.

And as the evening progressed, we were getting drunk.

Not falling-over, fighting-a-lamppost drunk.

Just pleasantly drunk.

Laughing more.

Talking more rubbish.

Feeling relaxed.

You know the feeling.

Eventually, we finished the bottle.

Which actually surprised us.

Had we really drunk an entire bottle of gin between us?

Apparently we had.

We were certainly feeling like we had.

So we went somewhere else, had a couple of beers and eventually went to bed.

The next day was turnover day.

The guests had left after their week's holiday, the new guests hadn't arrived yet, and all the staff got together.

We'd have a bit of fun, talk about the previous week and give out stupid staff awards.

Then our names were called.

And we were presented with a bottle of gin.

We didn't really understand why.

Until someone explained.

The night before, a couple of the other staff had taken our gin.

They'd replaced it with another bottle.

Same sort of bottle.

Except this one contained...

Water.

We hadn't drunk a bottle of gin.

We'd drunk a bottle of water.

Yet all three of us had genuinely felt drunk.

We weren't pretending.

Nobody had told us it was an experiment.

We believed we were drinking gin.

We could see the bottle.

We had the glasses.

We had the smell and taste associations.

We had the pistachios.

We were in the right environment.

We expected to become drunk.

And our brains filled in the rest.

Now, before the psychologists start emailing me, this isn't technically the McGurk effect. The McGurk effect specifically relates to conflicting visual and auditory speech information.

What happened to us was much closer to a placebo and expectation effect.

But the marketing lesson behind both is remarkably similar:

Perception isn't created by one thing.

It's created by lots of signals working together.

And that matters enormously when you're marketing a business.

Especially in Phuket.

Customers Don't Experience Your Business

Your Customer's Brain Is Already Building the Experience

Here's where businesses get marketing wrong.

They think the customer experiences the product.

They don't.

They experience their perception of the product.

Those aren't always the same thing.

Imagine you've booked a restaurant in Phuket.

Before you've eaten a single mouthful of food, you've probably already experienced:

The Instagram photos.

The Google rating.

The reviews.

The website.

The menu design.

The price.

The location.

The entrance.

The lighting.

The music.

The smell.

The greeting from the staff.

The table.

The plates.

The presentation.

By the time the food enters your mouth, your brain has already been given an enormous amount of information telling it:

This is going to be amazing.

Or...

This is going to be disappointing.

That's your bottle of gin.

Marketing Doesn't Stop When Someone Buys

This is where I think we need to rethink what marketing actually is.

Marketing isn't just convincing someone to make a booking.

Marketing helps create the expectation through which they experience that booking.

And that expectation can influence everything that follows.

If your photography says luxury...

Your website says luxury...

Your price says luxury...

Your Instagram says luxury...

Your reviews say luxury...

Then someone arrives and gets a plastic laminated menu, fluorescent lighting and a member of staff shouting "SIT ANYWHERE" from behind the bar...

You've created conflicting signals.

Their brain notices.

The illusion breaks.

It's like someone suddenly telling us:

"That's water you're drinking."

Restaurants: Make Everything Tell the Same Story

Let's say you're selling a premium steak dinner in Phuket.

Don't just market the steak.

Create the expectation of the steak.

Show the fire.

Show the chef.

Show the meat resting.

Show the knife cutting through it.

Show the steam.

Show the wine being poured.

Capture the sound of the grill.

Show the atmosphere of the restaurant.

Then make sure when the customer arrives, the real-world experience matches what you've shown them.

Because if your advertising says:

SPECIAL OCCASION

but your restaurant says:

QUICK TUESDAY LUNCH

there's a disconnect.

Every signal should reinforce the experience you're trying to create.

Gyms: Don't Sell Equipment

Most gyms market gyms.

Pictures of treadmills.

Pictures of dumbbells.

Pictures of machines.

Brilliant.

I've seen a dumbbell before.

Instead, think about what someone expects to feel when they join.

Confidence.

Energy.

Progress.

Community.

Belonging.

Maybe they want to feel stronger.

Maybe they want somewhere they don't feel intimidated.

Maybe they want to become part of a group.

Your social media should start creating that perception before they ever walk through the door.

Then your trainers, reception, music, classes and environment need to reinforce it.

Real Estate: You're Selling the Tuesday Morning

Property marketing is particularly guilty of forgetting this.

Here's the pool.

Here's the kitchen.

Here's bedroom number three.

Here's the drone shot.

Here's another drone shot.

Lovely.

But if you're selling someone the idea of living in Phuket, show them living in Phuket.

Coffee on the balcony at 7:30am.

Walking to the beach.

Working remotely by the pool.

Dinner five minutes from home.

The kids coming back from school.

The dog going for its morning walk.

You're not selling 187 square metres.

You're building the buyer's expectation of what their life could feel like.

Padel: Sell What Happens Around the Court

Padel is another perfect example.

Technically, you're renting a court and hitting a ball over a net.

That's not really what people are buying.

They're buying competition.

Laughing with friends.

Exercise.

Improvement.

Belonging.

A WhatsApp group that never shuts up.

A beer afterwards.

The rematch next Tuesday because Dave still insists that ball was out.

If you're marketing a padel club using nothing but photographs of empty courts, you're missing most of the product.

Show people the feeling of belonging to the club.

Then when they arrive, make sure that feeling actually exists.

Phuket Businesses Need to Think About Signals

High season is coming.

Thousands of people are going to arrive in Phuket with expectations already forming in their heads.

And every interaction with your business adds another signal.

Your TikTok. Your Instagram. Your Google Business Profile. Your Tripadvisor reviews. Your website. Your WhatsApp response. Your photographs. Your videos. Your staff. Your signage. Your music. Your packaging. Your pricing.

Your toilets.

Yes.

Even your toilets are marketing.

Because all those little signals are being combined by someone's brain to answer one enormous question:

"Is this place what I thought it was going to be?"

The strongest brands make the answer:

Yes.

Don't Fake the Gin

There is an important distinction here.

I'm not suggesting you trick customers.

Quite the opposite.

If anything, our ridiculous bottle-of-water experiment demonstrates why you need to be careful about the expectations you create.

You can make something look incredible online.

You can use AI.

Professional photography.

Drone footage.

Influencers.

Clever editing.

Beautiful websites.

Fantastic copy.

You can create an incredible expectation.

But eventually the customer arrives.

And if reality doesn't match the expectation you've built, you've got a problem.

The goal isn't to create an illusion.

The goal is to make all the signals point towards a genuine experience that you can actually deliver.

So What Should Phuket Businesses Do Before High Season?

Look at your business through the customer's senses rather than through your marketing channels.

Don't ask:

"Is our Instagram good?"

Ask:

"What does our Instagram make someone expect?"

Don't ask:

"Are our photos professional?"

Ask:

"What do these photographs tell someone this experience will feel like?"

Don't ask:

"Is our website nice?"

Ask:

"Does the experience promised by our website match what happens when someone actually arrives?"

Then look at everything else.

Google. Social. WhatsApp. Reception. Staff. Music. Smell. Lighting. Service. Product. Follow-up. Reviews.

Are they all telling roughly the same story?

Because that's branding.

Not your logo.

Not your font.

Not whether you've finally agreed on exactly which shade of blue everyone is allowed to use.

Branding is the collection of signals that teaches someone's brain what to expect from you.

I Still Can't Believe We Got Drunk on Water

Looking back, the funniest part of that night isn't that someone swapped the gin.

It's that there were three of us.

Three grown men.

A New Zealander.

An Aussie

And an Englishman.

Drinking water.

Eating pistachios.

Getting progressively more "drunk".

And not one of us stopped and said:

"This gin tastes suspiciously like Evian."

Our brains had been given enough signals.

Bottle.

Glasses.

Situation.

Friends.

Expectation.

Previous experience.

So our brains constructed the rest.

That's the bit marketers should pay attention to.

Your customers aren't robots objectively measuring your product.

They're human beings.

They arrive with expectations.

They notice signals.

They combine what they see, hear, smell, read, remember and feel.

And from all of that, their brain creates an experience.

So this high season, don't just ask:

What are we selling?

Ask:

What are we teaching our customers to expect?

Then make absolutely sure that when they arrive...

you give them the gin you promised.

Not the water.

— Jay Leshark

Shark 13 Productions

Part of the Shark 13 Phuket High Season Marketing Series.