It’s Monday, I’m Nithya Sudhir. I collect words, chase patterns, and write about whatever makes me curious.
Queen Elizabeth I accidentally invented the drop model — and it started with an Easter bun
Every Easter, millions of people buy a bun marked with a cross. The hot cross bun.
It is one of the oldest traditions in the world.
And hidden inside that tradition is one of the most powerful consumer psychology principles your brand can use this Easter.
It’s Monday. Let’s get right into it.
🤝 This edition is kindly brought to you by SARAL
Slumberkins did. Cold turkey.
Post-iOS privacy changes, all metrics were a mess: CPMs rising, targeting broken, creative fatigued.
Sound familiar?
👉 To combat, Slumberkins used SARAL to build something different. A community of influencers who genuinely loved the brand, posting in their own words.
Then… they shut Meta off completely. Revenue held. First-purchase profitability went up.
When they turned it back on, they ran whitelisted influencer content instead of branded creative. CPC dropped 70% and influencers generated 2x more impressions than search ads.
The influencer program didn't just replace paid reach. It made Meta perform better.
Slumberkins built it with SARAL—handling influencer discovery, personalised mass outreach, relationship management, and performance tracking—all with a team of two.
The question isn't whether influencers work. It's whether you've built the system to make paid ads optional.
We partner with a select group of brands that we use or admire, allowing this newsletter to remain free and independent. Reach out for your campaign here.
What a Tudor-era bread ban can teach you about selling out
A little history first.
For over a thousand years, the Saxons were baking buns marked with a cross during their spring celebrations to honor Eostre, the goddess of dawn and fertility, who gave her name to Easter.
Then, Christianity arrived. The cross stayed and the bun became a Good Friday staple, with the cross on top representing the crucifixion, the spices inside representing those used to embalm Christ.
Suddenly, in 1592, the Crown decided it had gotten too powerful.
Yeah, a bun had gotten too powerful.
Queen Elizabeth I issued a decree limiting the sale of hot cross buns. You could sell these buns only on funerals, Christmas, and Good Friday.
The people refused. No one could keep them from their beloved buns.
So, they began baking them in secret. In their own kitchens. Under cover. Risking confiscation.
Which brings us to the most counterintuitive truth in consumer psychology:
The fastest way to make someone want something is to tell them they can't have it.
The forbidden fruit effect (it's not just a Bible thing)
In 1966, psychologist Jack Brehm published a theory.
The idea that when a freedom is threatened or taken away, people don't accept the loss. They fight it. The restricted option doesn't just stay desirable, it becomes more desirable than before the restriction existed.
He called it Psychological Reactance.
Have you also noticed how "KEEP OUT" or "DO NOT TOUCH" signs often tempt you to do exactly what’s prohibited? That’s reactance.
The Boomerang Effect
When a choice is taken away, your brain registers it as an injustice, a violation of your freedom.
That tells your brain, ”Get the thing back, by any means necessary.”
Psychologists call this the Boomerang Effect.
When attempts to persuade someone to change their behavior or beliefs result in the exact opposite outcome.
So, in the case of hot cross buns, the ban didn't kill demand for hot cross buns. It supercharged it.
And it did something else that brands spend millions trying to do: it added meaning to the product.
Now made in secret, in the privacy of the home, the buns soon became shrouded in myth and household superstition, invested with medicinal properties and magical powers.
A bun that was merely tasty in 1591 became a sacred object by 1595.
And reactance doesn't work alone. It stacks with two other forces that DTC brands know well:
Loss aversion: we feel the pain of losing something roughly twice as intensely as we feel the pleasure of gaining it.
The moment a product becomes scarce, the consumer brain stops asking "do I want this?" and starts asking "what if I can't have it?".
Social proof: when people see others racing to get something, the brain interprets scarcity as a signal of quality.
If that many people want it, it must be worth having. Scarcity doesn't just create urgency. It creates validation.
You don't browse Ffern. You get on the list.
Ffern is a standout DTC fragrance brand that fully embraces scarcity. Four fragrances a year, one per season, each made to order. To receive one, you join The Ledger, their waitlist. Once production begins, no additional units are ever made.
Here's what makes it genuinely brilliant:
The scarcity isn't a marketing tactic layered on top of the product. It is the product.
The waiting, the randomness of the draw, the knowledge that this exact fragrance will never be made again. That's what people are paying for.
It’s like Queen Elizabeth's Easter playbook. Except instead of confiscating buns, Ffern just never makes enough.
How your brand can use this
Make the window real. Set a hard date. When it's gone, it's gone.
Sell the loss, not the gain. "After Easter Sunday, this is gone until next year" is more powerful than any discount. Loss aversion is doing your copywriting for you.
Frame scarcity as a decision. Selling out because of poor inventory feels sloppy. Choosing to make 500 units feels prestigious.
Let the miss-outs market for you. They're your most motivated buyers next drop. Capture them on a waitlist.
Use it sparingly. If everything is "limited," nothing is. Treat drops as events, not a default setting.
The hot cross bun survived a royal ban, centuries of religious tension, and the industrial revolution. It's still on every bakery shelf every Easter. Because the thing about a forbidden product, especially one wrapped up in ritual and meaning, is that people never quite stop wanting it.
Build your brand accordingly.
🛒 The Checkout
A quick take before you go
Did this change how you think about your next product drop?
Be honest. After reading this, did you suddenly want a hot cross bun?
💡 The Idea Jar
📬 Got a question about consumer psychology or DTC you've always wondered about? Send it in, I might answer it in a future edition.
📖 Got a story? If something from today's essay sparked a memory, a campaign that flopped, a drop that went insane, a psychology trick that worked on you. I want to hear it. I feature real brand stories here, and I might just reach out to interview you.
🌱 Got a topic idea? What do you want to understand better: pricing, loyalty, UX, social proof, something else entirely?
Just hit reply. My inbox is open.
How's the depth of today's edition?
Until next week，
Nithya
P.S. If you want to get a case study about your own brand, reply to this email. If you’d like to reach our newsletter audience (founders, creators, and marketers), click the button below.
If you’re new here, I’m over the moon you’ve joined us! To help me craft content that’s actually useful (and not just noise in your inbox), I’d love it if you took 1 minute to answer this quick survey below. Your insights help shape everything I write.
