Hot Cross Buns, Trust Falls, and the Business of Influence
There’s something oddly comforting about British supermarkets at Easter. The rows of glinting foil, the endless variations on a theme, the Red Leicester hot cross buns no one asked for. But once you look past the novelty, what you really see is strategy: a tightly choreographed masterclass in mix.
Easter, like Christmas, is when brands go to work not just selling more—but selling differently. They stretch formats, layer price points, and nudge consumers toward variants that increase margin, unlock new occasions, or justify a little indulgence. It’s one of the few times a year where product mix becomes both visible and visceral. And it never fails to make me smile.
But this year, it also made me pause.
Because if we accept that seasonal mix is a well-honed machine—clear, creative, and commercially sound—then it raises a bigger question: how are brands trying to influence mix the rest of the year? What other strategies are being used to nudge people into new choices? And are they as coherent as a shelf full of chocolate bunnies?
That question’s been on my mind a lot lately, particularly in light of Unilever’s new “influencer-first” strategy. While some brands fine-tune seasonal tactics to drive margin at the shelf, Unilever is testing whether mix can be shifted by changing how trust and persuasion happen in the first place. It’s a big move. And it tells us something about where marketing might be headed.
This piece is my attempt to unpick that shift—through the lens of hot cross buns, social psychology, pricing power, and the strange new frontiers of brand trust. Jonathan Haidt will make an appearance. So will your CFO. I’ll try not to sound too much like a grumpy old man shouting at the TikTok algorithm.
No promises.
The Forgotten Lever: Mix – Quietly Powerful, Rarely Glamorous
When we talk about marketing effectiveness, we usually start with the familiar suspects: media choices, creative craft and brand equity can contribute to sales volume and price. All important. But one of the most commercially powerful levers—product mix—is often left quietly sitting at the back.
And that’s a mistake. Because while volume gets headlines and price gets heat, it’s mix that often delivers the greatest return. Mix is where brands stretch into new tiers, nudge margins higher, and sell smarter—not just louder. It’s how businesses evolve from being bought to being chosen.
It’s a core lever marketers can directly influence that shows up in the financials. It’s where strategic intent becomes commercial impact. But to move mix, you need more than ideas—you need belief. You need trust. And trust takes time, coherence, and consistency.
Easter: The Great Seasonal Mix Test
Easter is retail mix in microcosm. Shelves bloom with product variants—mini eggs, mega eggs, vegan options, and novelty formats designed to spark joy and stretch margins. This isn’t just festive theatre—it’s commercially deliberate.
Waitrose has reported a record-breaking year for dairy-free Easter eggs, with sales up 193%. Meanwhile, John Lewis has leaned into the growing 'Eastermas' trend, expanding into homeware and seasonal gifting. I’m lucky enough to work with both, and it’s always striking how seriously they approach seasonal strategy—not just as a trading moment, but as a brand-building opportunity.
This is mix in motion: adjusting format, occasion, and price point to stretch brand reach and resilience. It's not just about selling more. It's about selling differently—and more profitably.
And the calendar matters. Research shows that the length of seasonal periods like Christmas and Easter has a statistically significant impact on retail sales. More days of relevance mean more time to push seasonal SKUs, build mental availability, and capture discretionary spend. And that commercial opportunity isn’t just driven by product mix or clever creative—media plays a starring role.
The right campaign weight, deployed with consistency and precision, doesn’t just support a seasonal peak. It can extend it. Media is the advertising asset that amplifies everything else. It stretches the shelf-life of attention, builds momentum for the message, and turns a trading window into a longer-lasting behaviour shift.
In other words, your Easter range might be perfect. But without sustained, quality media behind it—creative that reinforces the offer, and reach that lasts across the season—you’re only doing half the job.
Why Mix Is Hard to Shift
If mix is so powerful, why don’t we lean on it more? Because shifting mix is hard. Not logistically—but behaviourally. It asks people to make different choices, try unfamiliar variants, stretch into new formats, or pay a little more for something slightly better.
You can’t reason people into that. Not easily. And certainly not en masse.
To shift mix effectively, you have to influence how people feel—about the product, the brand, and what choosing it says about them.
Intuition, Influence and the Psychology of Choice
That’s where psychology comes in. Jonathan Haidt’s Social Intuitionist Model offers a more grounded view of how people actually make decisions: intuitively first, socially second, and only then do they rationalise. We like to think we're led by logic. But in reality, we’re guided by gut and group. Logic, in Haidt’s framing, isn’t a driver of judgement—it’s a press secretary, justifying decisions we’ve already made. (Just look at Trump or J.D. Vance for real-world case studies—decisions made with the gut, post-rationalised terribly by the mouth, and defended with the sort of confidence that only comes from never thinking things through.)
That has profound implications for marketers. If you want to change behaviour—like convincing someone to buy a pricier variant or try something unfamiliar—you need to engage at that intuitive level. It’s less about information and more about emotion. Less about persuasion, more about positioning within a social context.
Influencers, then, have the potential to be modern vessels of intuition. They trigger emotional responses, provide social proof, offer pockets of peer-level trust in a world where hierarchical authority is fading—and they make unfamiliar products feel personally relevant. It’s no surprise brands want to tap into that power.
Unilever: Bold Bet, Fragile Foundation
Few brands are embracing a Haidt-style model of marketing quite as boldly as Unilever.
With 50% of its global ad spend now going to social platforms—and an “influencer-first” strategy at the heart of it—Unilever is placing a serious bet on intuition over information, emotion over explanation, and the idea that trust is better built socially than corporately. It’s not just a tactical adjustment. It’s a philosophical shift. And an expensive one.
Unilever’s approach comes straight from the top. Speaking to investors, new CEO Fernando Fernandez described brands as “suspicious by default.” His solution? Let others speak for them at scale.
That turns traditional brand-building on its head. Instead of creating trust through consistency, the voice is outsourced. Instead of building belief through repetition, the message is atomised across creators.
It’s the kind of move that’s exciting to watch precisely because it isn’t mine to defend. A bold, possibly brilliant, possibly Icarian attempt to rewrite how brands create influence—soaring fast on wings of borrowed belief, and hoping the wax holds.
At first glance, the logic has surface appeal. Influencers are microbrands. They understand their audience, build credibility, and operate within clear boundaries. Used wisely, they can help shift not just product—but mix. But here's where my inner sceptic kicks in. While the psychological foundations are solid, the commercial translation is less certain. It's one thing to trigger intuitive reactions. It's another entirely to build the kind of brand coherence that supports long-term pricing power and category stretch. The influencer model is seductive—but fragile. And the cracks start to show when you try to scale it to Unilever levels.
Because what happens in a crisis, when the brand needs to speak with one voice? You can’t ask 10,000 micro-influencers to issue a unified apology.
You need coherence. Custodianship. Control.
So if trust is a component in shifting mix—and mix drives long-term value—then Unilever’s strategy isn’t just a creative experiment. It’s a commercial risk. A high-stakes test of whether distributed influence can replace brand coherence without eroding the very foundation it depends on.
And that brings us to the broader point.
Trust, Mix, and the Role of Marketing
I'll admit it: being the grouchy old man I increasingly resemble, I start from a place of suspicion when it comes to influencer campaigns. I’ve seen too many tactics dressed as strategies, and too many vibes-based partnerships held up as proof of concept.
But I'm also a believer in the power of social science. Haidt’s model tells us something important—that our decisions are emotionally primed and socially reinforced. In that context, influencer marketing makes real psychological sense. Used wisely, it can be a powerful tool to nudge new product choices and shift mix.
Still, I worry about the scale of Unilever's shift. About the dilution of custodianship. About the slow erosion of brand voices into a sea of content creators, each brilliant but inconsistent.
Yet here's the thing: I applaud the boldness. If you're going to bet on a new model, bet properly. Unilever isn’t dabbling—they’re committing. I wouldn’t make the same bet, but I respect the clarity.
Brands that win in seasonal peaks like Easter or Christmas do so because they are trusted. The decision to buy a premium egg, or a weird new format, is grounded in belief that the brand stands behind it. That belief is built over time, across channels, and through consistency.
Influencers can spark interest. They can even help reshape perceptions. But they can't be the entire foundation of trust. That must come from the brand itself.
If we want to improve marketing effectiveness, we need to reprioritise mix. And if we want to shift mix, we need to protect trust. You can rent attention. But you have to earn belief.
And you can't outsource that.
