Five minutes with Emma Baines

Emma Baines chats to Transform editor Jack Cousins at Paradigms 2024 about life as an in-house creative, working in Europe and her favourite project to date as global head of creative at Tony's Chocolonely.

You worked for a number of design agencies over the years before making the switch in-house to HelloFresh in 2019, and then Tony’s a few years later. What do you enjoy most about the in-house life?

I love in-house because you can really focus on one brand. There's pros and cons to both, but what I love is the people. You are all behind one brand. And in this case now, one mission. It's the reason we come to work every day. You can go so, so deep into that. I think what was really interesting was the talk yesterday from someone who was saying that agency side is your creative firepower, but internally you've got that depth of knowledge and understanding of the audience and who you're talking to and the brand itself. So that's what I love. I think going to the depths of that rather than one day working on a brand and then having to change your hat and work on a different brand and then understand their whole guidelines in 10 minutes. Having everyone behind one brand, one mission is really strong.

Does part of you miss the novelty of working on multiple brands throughout a year at a design agency, compared with just one brand as you are now?

You can see it's pros and cons either way really. I loved working in an agency as well, but would I go back to one? Probably not. The reason for that is because I do enjoy working on one brand. I like uncovering truths. I like learning insights, getting really, really deep into new things. If you're working on a great, interesting brand, then there'll always be problems to solve. So I don't have that kind of creative fatigue. Working for agencies was something I also loved; it's a very different style and different opportunities come and go, but you don't fully get invested unless you've got that kind of retainer relationship with a brand. Everyone I know moves from agency to in-house, but I don't know many people that go the other way. So there must be something great about in-house that means people don't move back to agency side.

How has the experience of working elsewhere in Europe, in Berlin and Amsterdam, impacted your creativity?

It really opened my eyes. I left London having come out of a relationship and I was ready for something new. I'd always had this urge to live and work abroad, I knew that the world wasn't just London. But I actually applied for the HelloFresh job and didn't realise it was in Berlin. I was in the first round of interviews and the woman said to me, 'How do you feel about moving to Berlin?' I was like, 'Sure, I'm up for this!' And then I got the job and it was amazing. I spent three or four years there. Berlin is such an amazing city and my team was so diverse; I think there was something like 18 different nationalities in my team of 20. So getting references from different cultures and diverse points of view is really, really important. Sometimes with London agencies and their creative style, I can't always tell the difference between one agency and another. But I definitely saw a lot of differences living in other countries.

Then I actually moved again for love to Amsterdam. My partner is Dutch and I'd also had enough of Berlin – I knew it was never going to be my forever home. I also suffered a burn out, so came to Amsterdam really excited to see what the scene was like there. It's very different. There are way more agencies in London but it's definitely an interesting and creative scene in Amsterdam. There are things happening that are really exciting. Is there as much as London? No, but I think that's just because of the size of it.

What’s your favourite piece of work you’ve produced to date at Tony’s, and why?

Well, it's actually a recent one that we've just launched, which has been my favourite because it was an idea that came quite quickly called 'Tony's looking for Tonys', which has just gone live online. And it was basically us shooting our shot. It was like, we're Tony's Chocoloney and we're still lonely and looking for more Tonys, we need more Tonys to join us. And so instead of going after 'Big Choco' and poking fun at them, we're inviting some very famous Tonys to join our mission and share our chocolate and our story. So we created a little video where we sent out an invite to Anthony Hopkins, Anthony Edwards, Toni Kroos, Antonia Gentry and a bunch other very famous Tonys, where we invited them to do something with us, whether it be to create a bar with us or just be part of our mission. We sent invites out and actually didn't hear back from any of them, but we did hear back from an Anthony Hopkins in the UK who will now hopefully be equally as famous as the real Anthony Hopkins! But that was a really great campaign because right from the start to finish it was a great collaboration between us and the markets. And it was just a bit of fun!