Why does the bottle make the booze taste better?

Like, why DOES packaging actually change our experience so much?

F’rinstance, let’s say you’re in duty-free in Guangzhou and this bottle of Macallan 200th Anniversary Scotch catches your eye. (It should: the bottle has its own insane box. And the box has its own insane shelf display.)

So you plunk down 9,600 RMB (USD$1,400) to take some home & surprise your friend Ethan with this lovely gift for his speakeasy.

When you and he finally pour a dram, you ooh and ahh over it. The nose! The complexity! The finish that goes for days!! What’s happening?

Well, there’s a new model of how the brain works. (Buhbye ‘reptile brain’ & ‘triune model’ & ‘videocamera’ model.) Quite simply: our brains are prediction machines. They work kinda like this:

1. We already have a ginormous model in our brains of how we think the world is gonna be.

2. We take in juuuust enough info to see if that model’s right.

3. We then try to minimize the gap between the model and the data.

4. So either we update our model, OR we literally change the data.

So in this case, we take in some info about how expensive & fancy & special this Macallan is. That builds a prediction about the liquid inside. And when we drink the liquid with Ethan, we try to minimize the gap between the prediction and the experience — which means going ga-ga over the booze, orrr deciding we shoulda stuck with the Filey Bay STR Finish Yorkshire Single Malt Whisky for $100 (which, oddly enough, technically isn’t even a Scotch. But daaaaang is it tasty.)

This prediction machine model is a formal explanation of George Lakoff’s ‘framing’ concept. And it unifies & explains the whole universe of self-fulfilling prophecies, phantom limbs, political bias, physical movement, hunger & thirst, psychosomatic pain, sports performance — and brands.

Some lessons:

🔸 Find out what people predict your brand & product & service will be like. Go talk to them! Watch them! Listen!

🔸 Use all 4 P’s of the marketing mix to help people create predictions (aka expectations, aka promises) about your brand.

🔸 Go check to see if it’s working.