Comment: Why we worship the Easter egg

The pagans of the 6th century knew a thing or two about marketing. They came up with a phenomenally strong and simple concept with which to worship the arrival of springtime – the egg.

Strong brands have a responsibility to their followers to stay true to their values

Angus Thirlwell, Hotel Chocolat chief executive and co-founder

It’s full of promise and hope, pulls emotional strings back to our own origins and is aesthetically beautiful. In fact, it was such a strong idea that it was sequestered by organised religion.

The egg was such a strong concept that it has survived and adapted. The chocolate Easter egg had to wait until 1873, when it was invented by a Brit (of course), Joseph Fry of Bristol.

Easter always reminds me that the best ideas are the simplest. We all have a tendency to over-complicate messages and concepts. Even if they don’t start off that way, over time they often become encumbered with ‘noise’ and gradually lose their edge.

Everyone wants to make their mark and to try to improve things, but rarely do we think it’s about taking things away, and paring back to the essence.

In the early days of our business I sought advice before making our first Easter egg. This was in the late 1990s when British chocolate was at a pretty low ebb. The consensus was to spin the eggs as thinly as possible so that they used little chocolate and then to arrange chocolates around the egg to make the whole proposition look as large as possible on the shelf.

Fortunately I decided to ignore this and we made our Easter eggs ridiculously thick and hid all the chocolates inside the shells too. Nearly twenty years later and our Extra Thick eggs are still the stars of our Easter and testament to the enduring appeal of simple, strong and honest.

Much of the success of Apple is about the power of simple. Stripping away the superfluous to arrive at a lean and pure aesthetic that makes us feel calmer and empowered. Easter is a good time to reflect on how we can all focus on strength and simplicity and resist the urge to churn and change, rather than strengthen and evolve.

Strong brands have a responsibility to their followers to stay true to their values and their icons. At Easter I always feel the need to examine our iconic products and check that we are investing in them enough; respecting their heritage and checking their share of light isn’t being usurped.

So when you crack into your egg this Easter break, let the cocoa flavanols do their work and stimulate your grey cells as well as your tastebuds.

Angus Thirlwell is chief executive and co-founder of Hotel Chocolat.