A Festive Final Future Moves with Emma Baines
Not sure how we arrived in December but here we are! Hope you're all enjoying a cracking Crimbo playlist, some mulled wine and any other festive festivities as we spend the next few weeks winding down until the holiday break.
As you may have gathered from the title this is our LAST Future Moves for 2024. Sob! It's been an absolute joy (and honestly a selfish pleasure) being able to sit down and talk to some truly brilliant people in our industry. Thank you to all our 15 guests. Each one of you has given us something to think differently about and for that we're eternally grateful.
We launched this series earlier this year with the sole purpose of highlighting leaders and experts in their field who we believe are pushing for better and making us feel more optimistic about the future of creativity. We were sick to the back teeth of reading about how AI was going to take our jobs, how agencies/brands were choosing automation and clicks over creativity and how soulless and empty our industry was becoming.
So these conversations were our way of showing that in amongst the doom and gloom and bad news cycle that creativity and original human-led thinking are still alive and well and not only delivering joy, action and connection with consumers but also driving business growth as well. We didn't want to contribute any "hot takes", we wanted our words to make people feel hopeful. To learn from some true values led leaders making tangible differences with their work. We hope we've succeeded in that.
So for all of you who have found 2024 hard... (I know we sure have at times) we hope that these conversations that have landed in your inboxes have made you feel a little lighter or have given you some visibility on the incredible, purposeful work that is happening behind the scenes by some brilliant values-led leaders. We genuinely believe that creativity is needed now more than ever - so don't lose hope. Every individual contribution matters - and we hope that ours has in some small way made a difference too.
We have some big news for you in 2025... but until then we hope you keep cosy, enjoy some well-deserved time off with loved ones and get to recharge and reboot to take on the year ahead.
Until then!
Jess & Nat
💫 How a brand like Tony’s Chocolonely combines purpose with creativity to succeed
💫 Why context is critical to producing great creative
💫 The risk of marketing to marketers, rather than customers
Meet Emma, the Global Head of Creative at Tony's Chocolonely. She blends her love for strategic thinking and creative flair with the ultimate mission of creating a world of exploitation-free chocolate (a dream job, some would say!)
We discovered Emma via her brilliant newsletter 'She is Creative', a Substack focusing on supporting and advocating for women in the creative industry. Here at Mac+Moore, we are all about amplifying the voices of brilliant women in business and shining a light on the work they do. According to Creative Equals in the UK, only 12% of creative directors are female. So we were thrilled when Emma agreed to appear in this edition of Future Moves to give the perspective of a female in a brand global leadership role. If we can see it, we can be it.
In this conversation, we discussed her creative and leadership roots, the differences between working in agencies and in-house, how finding her values led her to her best role yet and what she’s learned so far leading creative departments for globally recognised brands.
Jess: Hi Emma, thank you so much for agreeing to talk to us! Let’s kick off by talking about where your love for creativity started - was it when you were a child?
Emma: That's such an interesting question. So there are two sides to it. On the creative side, I have always been interested in drawing and doing artsy crafty projects. I also like finding patterns, which is why I love strategy. Then in my role as an eldest sibling, I'm quite bossy and I like things the way I like them and that feeds into the leadership side of me. I have always liked managing people and thinking about that process. I was always the one who would put on a play with my friends. I would organise everyone, write the script and make our parents come and watch them.
Jess: The creative industries are often not offered as a viable option when we’re at school. What did your journey look like?
Emma: When it came to picking a university and a subject I remember a friend of mine saying that she wanted to be a fashion designer and this was quite bold for our little traditional school. I was like, “Wait, what? Can you be that?” She gave me the Nottingham Trent University prospectus and I suddenly saw this world opened up where I can do something other than English. I found a fashion marketing and communication course and was like, “This is what I want to do”. I want to do Marketing Communication. I'm good with people. I really enjoy creativity. I'm really good at Art. I got accepted and the rest is history.
Jess: You’ve worked both at agencies and in-house. What are the main differences?
Emma: It’s interesting because there are lots of similarities and lots of differences. I think it depends on the brand and their environment and culture. When I went to HelloFresh, my biggest observation was that in an agency, you were brought together, because you wanted to do the best work you could for the client. You had to all work together. However, in-house I learned very quickly that (and maybe this was just specific to the HelloFresh work culture) that there was no common goal. There was a lot more infighting and unnecessary politics and I was like, “Hang on, I thought coming in-house would mean we were even more together and that bond would be stronger because we ARE the client!” It was quite eye-opening for me and I found it really tricky.
Jess: You moved to Berlin from London when you started HelloFresh. How did you find that transition?
Emma: One of the worst mistakes I made was when I moved to Berlin. I grew up thinking you have to make yourself indispensable, plus I was a yes person. When I moved there I didn't know anyone. I didn't have any friends. My boss was in meetings from 8am till 6pm and I thought I was being so fucking clever as I knew she'd be free from six onwards, so I'd grab her then. I would pick her brains between six and eight. But this habit suddenly turned into me not getting home until 9pm every night. That jeopardised my personal time and my downtime. I had inadvertently managed her expectations completely wrong as I was essentially telling her I was completely available to her whenever she wanted. When I stopped being available anytime then problems arose, because I’d managed her expectations so terribly and I didn’t want that anymore.
Jess: When you realised your boundaries were overstepped what did you do next?
Emma: It took me some time, and for many reasons I realised I needed to leave HelloFresh and I made that call without a job to go to, which is so unlike me, if you've known me for a while I'm very considered and strategic in my decisions so this really pained me. I worked with two career coaches to get to the point where I could actually hand in my notice because it just wasn't working. I was living in Berlin on my own. I was doing a job that I enjoyed but there were just some things that were no longer vibing with me. And I was not living out any of my values. So I did some work on my values and I realised why I was in so much pain and why I'm finding things so difficult was because nothing was aligning. A big value for me is connection. I was living so far away from home, friends and family. I just wasn't feeling connected to any of my colleagues either, especially during COVID. I thought something's got to change. So I made the decision to leave. I'll be honest, I was on the edge of burnout and I had just worked through it. I didn't listen to any signs of my body, my head… I just kept on going. I would never recommend it to anybody. But I did have the sense to kind of take a step back and go, What is it that I really want? What is it that I really need? So I made my exit plan and I saved some money so that I was able to do it without any scrimping and saving. I made this plan so that at least it wasn't jumping into the darkness. It was a planned exit. I took three months off and it was just the best thing I could have ever done for myself. It was during my notice period that I found the job at Tony's. I achieved nothing other than getting myself better and refreshed. I fell back in love with Berlin and left on a good note.
Jess: Is there any advice for younger creative women on how to avoid burnout?
Emma: You've got to make mistakes to learn, I made a big mistake in not learning my boundaries and how to manage them. I think I'm in the same boat as a lot of people. But you don't learn by getting everything right. I think the biggest thing I would say to myself there was at the time, it's just, I think there's more understanding of what burnout is now and what the early symptoms could look like. I would recommend to people just to be aware of that so that you can recognise in yourself when something isn’t right. Because you can counteract it if you get it early enough. And the worst thing to do is to get it to the point where you've got to take three months off to literally figure out what the hell's going on.
Jess: You now work for Tony Chocolonely now, a brand on a purpose-driven mission with a global footprint. What’s critical for you to achieve success?
Emma: We are a challenger brand and our biggest challenge is how do we do a little with a lot, budget-wise. So we have to be smart with our decisions and efficient with our time and resources. I fear that as creatives we run the risk of a lot of the time of marketing to marketers. I think that's really interesting as we go through rounds of creative saying “This is a great idea” and you're patting yourself on the back and the consumer doesn't give a shit. Whatever they want is not always what you want to give. Something I'm always thinking about is that the world doesn't need more stuff. Do they really need more marketing and advertising? That's why working at Tony's is really interesting because there's so much more to it. There's a higher purpose than just making profit, which is our mission to end exploitation in cocoa.
I’ve also found that working in a global role you need to get the marketing managers on board. It is the IKEA effect you need to bring them along with you and they need to feel like they're part of it. I call it context, because I need the context from my team if we're going to work on something. I don't need to be in every single meeting, but I just need to know what's happening. And then I feel like I'm part of it. So I’m constantly asking “What's the context for that?” “Why do you want that to be blue?” If you can give me the rationale for that and let’s find a way forward that makes sense. Context helps us understand rather than just saying, “Don't do that, do this”. Tell me why. And then we can solve that problem.
Jess: Do you think businesses understand the value and role of creativity?
Emma: The best businesses do! Generally though there’s a feeling that creativity can solve everything. We can solve certain things but we can't solve everything. I think there's an understanding that we need to build out and educate others. I'm constantly saying this to my team: we have to educate people on the creative process, because it’s like an hourglass. We have a problem and then we blow it out and explore further. Then we come back in and we blow it out again because we might not hit it the first time in terms of what we're trying to achieve. I think people who don't work in our industry or don't work in this area see it as a more linear process, and it's just not like that.
Jess: We live in a world where data is often valued more than creativity. What are your views?
Data is so important, if only to show the correct direction of travel, it’s a great guidance to underpin what you’re trying to achieve. But it can be interpreted in many ways at times and it can be tricky to measure creative effectiveness. How do you measure quality? From another angle, I’ve seen it become too easy to blame the creative. It is so easy to say that something didn't work, because the creative wasn't good enough. I had that a lot at HelloFresh. It was something I was so bored of hearing at the end. If sales were low, it would be like, Oh, it's the creative's fault. So we ended up changing our metrics and looked at the click-through rate because we couldn’t take responsibility for the full funnel and conversion rate. We can get people in with thumb-stopping creative, yes but if there's a whole load of problems on the website can’t be responsible for the full outcome.
Jess: What brands are you currently excited about?
Emma: I'm obsessed with Liquid Death. I was listening to this podcast with Mike Cessario on The Uncensored CMO and I loved the point he made when he said that you can have a great idea, but if you don't do it, or you don't do it well, that's still just a great idea he says “ great ideas are worth $0 without execution”. I thought that was so interesting. Something I say to my team all the time is that we need to have all these ideas and also execute on them. I'm lucky that Tony's is very much the brand that cares about creativity. Our mission is at the heart of what we do, but brand and creative is the expression of the brand and how we communicate to the world. Our brand is our point of difference. It's our USP. It's why we stand out on shelves. We're a challenger brand always trying to mix things up and do things differently.
Jess: You’re recently back at work after maternity. How do you feel? Has anything changed for you?
Emma: Being British, I have a team that includes Dutch, French, and Danish members who are very direct. My Englishness made me use ten sentences to say what I meant. I still tend to do this, trying to find the right words instead of just being straightforward. Now, with my team, I'm more direct and clear: let’s get it done. This new approach (I think!) has made me a better leader. I'm more focused on what I can achieve with the time available, which may sound harsh, but it's necessary in making sure I balance doing a good job, leading, delivering and also be home for the bathtime routine. My working hours have changed, and while Tony and my team are amazingly flexible, it was a bit of a shock when I returned from maternity leave. But I felt I did come back with a bang, more productive and with a completely different view. This new mindset has been incredibly helpful, and I feel like a brand new person.
Jess: I know being a role model to other women on the way up is really important to you. Did you have any women in your field you looked up to?
Emma: I still struggle with that. I think Mary Portas is the only woman I can think of because she had her own agency. I only know about it, because I interviewed there once. I've really struggled to answer that question and ask who were your biggest inspirations… as I look around the room and go, where are the senior women?
Jess: You’ve built a brilliant personal brand online as a woman in creative leadership. Was this intentional? Or did it happen as a happy accident?
Emma: I hadn't set out to build a personal brand but I was interested in it. She is Creative was actually first thought of as a podcast, interviewing women at all levels about how they got into the creative industry. I believe you have to see it to be it. So I thought where are all the women? Then one day I was like I'm just gonna write, I like writing. I write as I speak, which is sometimes a little bit all over the place. But I think that's probably why it comes across as authentic because it is just how my brain works. I really want to find women like me and have discussions around creativity and maybe be something for other women to just start out their careers to kind of help and give something back. I'm a big believer in that.
Moving Forwards
A book, podcast or cultural movement that's made you think differently?
Atomic Habits by James Clear. It’s a classic but oh-so-good - the framework he outlines that improves habits by just being 1% better each day has stuck with me ever since I read the book, and it works! There aren’t many days I don’t think, come on Emma, just 1% more.
Also, a quote that I love from Mary Oliver’s poem A Summer Day is “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Such powerful words and a gentle and beautiful reminder to not get too caught up in routine and forget the preciousness of each moment. Particularly useful on busy days ;-)
Which future technology (or application of existing tech) are you optimistic for?
AI, obvious but true. We’re just scratching the surface and I’m interested to see the application of it in creative
Your hope for creativity in the future?
That diversity prevails. We’ve got to do better. Diverse representation and thinking only enhances creativity.
Who do you follow online for ideas, inspiration + advice?
Future Moves newsletter ;-)
The Hyphen by Emma Gannon | Substack
Things Worth Knowing with Farrah Storr | Farrah @Substack | Substack
Stef Sword-Williams Fuck Being Humble
One word to describe your hope for the future
Optimistic