Just before Christmas last year, I had the amazing opportunity to visit New York with my family. It was a whirlwind tour. We were there for just three days so we tried to get everything in as quickly as possible. We saw the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Central Park, and Ground Zero,…

On the 13th of July 1907, Leo Baekeland filed a patent application for Bakelite, the first wholly synthetic plastic. The invention of Bakelite is widely considered the birth of modern-day plastic. Baekland’s success enabled the age of plastic to truly begin. Not all plastics are synthetic; humans have been using plastic materials for thousands of…

Following the publication of Spare, a book about an ex-royal’s self-professed irrelevance, JR Moehringer is, for now at least, probably the most well-known and talked-about ghostwriter on the planet. Only this month he’s in the headlines again following an interview in the New Yorker magazine. The already acclaimed author’s fame is however, unusual for ghostwriters…

Last year I wrote a blog about my feelings of anxiety in the workplace. I was surprised, but extremely flattered when friends, family and colleagues alike told me how they felt my work was emotionally “raw” and “honest”. I didn’t feel I was being particularly “raw” – I wrote what I thought and felt no…

Artificial intelligence (AI) is having a profound impact on the way we write, from enhancing the accuracy and speed of writing to enabling us to generate entire pieces of content from scratch. AI-powered tools are revolutionizing the writing process, making it faster and easier than ever before. AI is being used to help writers craft…

In 1943 Abraham Maslow created his famous hierarchy of needs; a psychological motivational theory encompassing a five-tier model of our human needs. But why is this important to us 80 years later? Before I expand on ‘the why’ we must consider ‘the what’.  The five tiers are read from the bottom, upwards: self-actualisation (aka ‘outside…

April Fools’ Day. A day made for joking. A day made for pranks. I remember one year calling my father and telling him I got a speeding ticket. Let’s just say, he was not happy. I should’ve probably stuck with putting pepper in his coffee, or something like that. According to our good friend Wikipedia,…

Daisy’s diagnosis, when it came, was devastating. For a few years we knew instinctively that something wasn’t quite right and increasingly her school had raised concerns. But nothing prepared us for the opinion of the multi-disciplinary team who assessed our five-year-old daughter in Guy’s Hospital that morning in 2011. Autism is a spectrum disorder, and…

International Women’s Day (IWD) is a global day to recognise and celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. It also marks a call for action for accelerating women’s equality. According to the World Economic Forum, the global gender gap has been closed by 68.1% and at this rate of progress, gender parity…

It’s World Book Day, a tradition started by the United Nations in 1995 as a celebration of reading, education, the free press, and copyright. It’s also a day where we come together to celebrate our favourite books. My favourite book is George Orwell’s 1984. A book that I have read no less than seven times,…

Jointly written by Jack Sandbach and Megan Jay It’s 14 February. You know what that means? That’s right, two of Haggie Partners’ PR assistants, Megan (M) and Jack (J) have been here for a whole year! To celebrate the pair’s one-year Haggieversary we decided to interview the young couple and ask them on how their…

While it shouldn’t be, talking about cervical cancer screenings, otherwise known as smear tests, can be something of an awkward topic of conversation – almost a taboo subject. But it’s a lifesaving measure. According to Cancer Research, there are around 3,200 new cervical cancer cases in the UK every year, nearly 9 every day. In…

It’s January. Time for new beginnings.  New healthy eating regimes. New gym memberships. Every year the magazines are full of new things to learn, new diets, new habits to take up and old ones to break. Do they stick? Rarely.  Do they provoke useful thought and analysis?  Sometimes. In the business world, January can be…

I’ve always liked the idea of new year resolutions. There’s something sincerely inspiring about striving to be better come new year, after the explosive celebratory period of Christmas. Many of us try to give something up; it makes sense. Everyone has an Achilles heel, be it wine, TV, or chocolate. For me it’s salt. I’m…

The humble ant, of the order Hymenoptera, are insectoid, six-legged creatures with black or orange exoskeletons. You may have heard of them. An ant on its own is pretty useless; they’re small, with the British garden ant weighing around 1-2 milligrams. Yet collectively, the 20-quadrillion (20,000,000,000,000,000) ants on earth constitute 20% of all biomass on…

Zoom and myriad Covid-19 rules are upon us so I have updated my ‘10 Golden Rules For Surviving Your Company/Team Christmas Party’ (from five years ago) to reflect the times. One or two are still very pertinent, even on Zoom… Love them or hate them, Christmas parties are the source of hilarity, heartache, headache, stomach…

Social media is under the spotlight with Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. Individuals and organisations are watching closely and debating whether Twitter will degenerate into a platform they no longer wish to be associated with. It has also reignited a wider debate among companies, especially those in the B2B space, about their use of social…

Recently the UK government made a U-turn. You may have read about it – it caused a few headlines. Reactions were fairly broad ranging, depending partly on where you sit on the political spectrum, but also what you think about admitting to changing your mind in public. I’ve written before about corporate apologies but moving…

Today is the 10th of October, or 10/10. It is also World Mental Health Day. So here at Haggie Partners we have put together 10 areas to consider that could support good mental health: 1. Be kind Research shows that kindness is great for all parties involved. It can improve our mood, ease loneliness and…

On Tuesday 27th September, City Giving Day hits the City of London in a blur of scarlet.  Across social media and the actual City, workers clad in red t-shirts will be doing their bit.  But for what? As the organisers put it, “City Giving Day is a simple but impactful initiative that enables City companies…

If you’d told me a year ago that one of the main forms of entertainment I’d be enjoying today would be podcasts, I’d have laughed at you. Podcasts were, until recently, the butt of jokes amongst my friends, being that we were pretentious university students. We saw them as a kind of low art, the…

Last month saw England make history. We finally won an international football competition after 56 years, and it was women who did it. What makes this all the more special is that every single one of the lionesses got there through their love of the sport. Women’s football is not blessed with the fame and…

Throughout 2022, the Children’s Literacy Charity is celebrating 30 years of its work to close the literacy gap and broaden horizons. Haggie Partners has supported the Children’s Literacy Charity for several years now. With communications being a vital part of our PR business, everything we do revolves around language, so we decided to support those…

The recent Platinum Jubilee celebrations started me thinking about the connections between our Queen and other members of the royal family with another source of power, prestige, and stability in the UK – the Lloyd’s insurance market. Lloyd’s had humble origins as a coffee shop, before evolving over time into one of the most well-respected…