Anna Lawlor

Background

Anna Lawlor is a highly conceptual thinker renowned for her pragmatism in bringing ideas to life. A former national newspaper journalist, Anna’s 20 years’ experience spans B2B, B2C and corporate content and campaigns for multinationals and Tier 1 media.

An ‘unflappable’ media professional, Anna has an eye for a story and the intellectual curiosity to grasp complex concepts quickly. She lives and breathes media; print, broadcast, online and social.

Content Delivery

Prior to co-founding Luminescence, Anna was a Financial Times Editor, specialising in the investment and asset management sector.

An NCTJ-qualified journalist, Anna has written for the majority of UK natioanl newspapers. Starting her career in 2001, she cut her teeth on The Sunday Times’ internship scheme, the first intern accepted onto the award-winning Foreign desk (during the 2003 Iraq war). In 2006, she specialised in financial journalism, working on staff at the FT during the ‘credit crunch’ crisis.

For Luminescence, she has created content campaigns and produced editorial and content marketing for brands including:

• Accenture
• Android
• Barclays
• BMW
• Microsoft
• PwC
• Saxo Capital Markets
• Social Media Week.

From 2015-19, she was the Editorial Director of the FT’s flagship philanthropy report and has interviewed eminent business leaders, politicians, and notable public figures such as His Highness the Aga Khan and Rockefeller family. In 2014, Anna Lawlor was Commissioning Editor of The Guardian‘s social media marketing series. She has also been co-host of the Social Media Show Podcast with Anna Marsden.

Anna Lawlor currently has a podcast in development with Loftus Media for BBC Radio 4.

Strategic Insights

Anna Lawlor relishes bringing ideas to life and ‘cutting through’ to reach and resonate with a specific audience. To achieve this, she combines a healthy dose of cynicism; there must be real value in any message, from content marketing to a social media post. Her guiding principle is:

It’s never about ‘us’, it is first, last and always about ‘them’; the buyer, the prospect, the reader. If it doesn’t further the discussion, it’s not worth saying. 

She is fascinated by the changing communications landscape, particularly the opportunities inherent in the disruption of ‘traditional’ communications methods and channels. She takes a strategic and holistic approach to reputation management and influence, mixing insights from varied disciplines including behavioural science, trend forecasting and user-experience testing.

Having accrued a wealth of contacts across media, philanthropy, technology, financial services and business innovation, Anna is well placed to draw on a plethora of sources for inspiration and applied learnings that then benefit her and Luminescence’s clients.

Anna holds a BSc in International Relations, achieved alongside work via distance learning with The Open University.

Passions

Outside work Anna Lawlor can be found with a glass of good wine and her nose in a book, newspaper or independent magazine – or animatedly putting the world to rights.

Anna is a creative storyteller; she always has a factual broadcast pitch under development as well as a screenwriting or playwriting project.

Having previously competed at the British Snowboard Championships alongside Olympians Jenny Jones and Zoe Gillings-Brier, Anna is an avid snowboarder and, more recently, a downhill mountain biker and kayaker.

Find out about Anna Marsden, Founder, Head of Training & Digital.