Career History | Agency | Freelance Laurence Blume

LAURENCE BLUME

PROFESSIONAL COPYWRITING FOR BUSINESS

About Laurence - Career History

My ad agency career

I’ve been a professional copywriter since 1981.

Brought up and educated in Manchester, I gained a 1st Class (Hons) degree in Graphic Design from the London College of Printing (today a part of the University of the Arts London).

I began my career at the Saatchi and Saatchi Edinburgh agency, Hall Advertising, where I won my first creative award.

I moved from there to join the London office of TBWA. In 1984 I moved to Boase Massimi Pollitt, then widely regarded as the finest creative agency in the world, eventually reaching the position of Joint Creative Director.

I left the agency in 1989 to join the London office of global agency group DMB&B.

With the birth of my first child, I moved from DMB&B to the private UK agency Burkitt Weinreich Bryant.

In 1994, I moved to Still Price Lintas, spending five highly successful years there (and at its successor agency Ammirati Puris Lintas), as a writer and Board Director.

I left the agency world for good in 1999.

My freelance career

After leaving agencies, I first joined a small web development company as its creative director.

Then in 2001, realising that there was at that time no UK marketing-focused copywriting service online, and recognising the potential for such an offer, I purchased the web domain freelancecopywriter.co.uk and launched my freelance practice.

That same year, I drafted the Freelance Copywriter Terms and Conditions document still widely used by other copywriters as the basis for their own business terms. The following year, I launched Great Sales Letters (now retired), the UK’s first ‘pay-in-advance’ online service for commissioning sales letters.

In 2006, I acquired the web domain copywriting.co.uk

In the 22 year lifespan of freelancecopywriter.co.uk, I’ve written for over 800 clients, ranging from hopeful entrepreneurs in bedrooms to giant corporations such as Allianz, Siemens, Thompson Reuters, Harrods Bank, Unilever and Informa.