So, you want to change the world? How PR can be used to fuel your revolution

Campaigners are using old and new storytelling tactics to raise awareness of their causes — resulting in societal change.

Communicators are not your typical heroes. We are regularly portrayed as either dumb, materialistic or even Machiavellian. The BBC’s The Thick of It includes the extremes of the archetypes, from the underhand tactics of the spin doctor Malcolm Tucker to the incompetent bumbling of the Director of Communications, Terri Coverly.[i]

However, not all heroes wear capes. The Times recently highlighted the new generation of campaigners fighting for gender equality. These campaigners aim to end parental discrimination in the workplace, increase paternity leave and prevent health inequalities in maternity care.

It’s notable that many of these parent activists have a background in PR. Joeli Brearley, founder of Pregnant Then Screwed, was listed in PR Week’s Top 10 Communicators of 2023. [ii]. Alex Lloyd Hunter, Co-Founder of The Dad Shift, runs his own digital campaigning agency.

The 2025 Missing Women Study by CIPR makes for grim reading. Their research shows almost 4,000 female public relations practitioners are missing after leaving mid-career or failing to progress.

It appears what’s happening in PR mirrors wider society. According to the Fawcett Society, the UK pay gap stands at 10.9%, with progress stalling. They argued that the “Government must act with urgency and ambition”.[i]

Speaking of ambition, the historian Rutger Bregman at the 2025 BBC Reith Lectures issued a rallying cry for moral ambition in an age of immorality. He describes it as “Moral ambition is the will to make the world a wildly better place. To devote your working life to the great challenges of our time.”[iv]

His bestseller, Moral Ambition, at first glance doesn’t seem particularly positive to PR; it is listed as a “not-so-useful” job, followed by a poll that shows 40% of sales, marketing and PR staff see their job as pointless.[v]

Challenging the status quo: PR campaigns on parental leave

Campaign organisation The Dad Shift made headlines in September 2025 after their activists attached baby slings with dolls to famous male statues around London and Edinburgh. They were highlighting the poor paternity leave available in the UK, the worst in Europe, and the crucial role of fathers. Co-founder George Gabriel explained the impact of the campaign in The Guardian: “A lot of people stopped to take photographs; people responded very warmly. We meant it to be a positively provocative sight.”[vi]

The statue campaign not only sparked conversations in the UK, but it also received international coverage and led to events in Parliament[vii] on paternity leave and pay in October 2025. Alongside parental rights organisation Pregnant Then Screwed, The Dad Shift continued to turn the dial on parental rights with a billboard campaign stating “UK Paternity Leave is a Mother F**cker”,[viii] along with local activists from The Dad Shift placing mock-up parking fines or Paternity Charge Notices on infant-related items (e.g. prams, baby formula).[ix]

Pregnant Then Screwed is a charity aiming to end the motherhood penalty. Their social media highlights numerous cases of women who have sued their former employers for unlawful dismissal. Not only did the associated companies have to pay lengthy legal bills, but arguably something more costly — the reputational damage from the media coverage of these legal cases.

In 2024, Pregnant Then Screwed supported Nicola Hinds at an employment tribunal against her former employer, Mitie, after she was treated poorly during her pregnancy and then upon returning from maternity leave. The judge said that “her male boss had ‘stereotyped’ her as ‘an emotional, hormonal pregnant woman ‘” and criticised Mitie for hypocritically joining a 2016 campaign to end maternity discrimination. The judge commented: “A fully inclusive employer with an ethical and moral compass would recognise a legal judgment against them and make good on that.”[x]

A lack of moral compass?

The Edelman Trust Barometer is an annual survey of 33,000 respondents in 28 countries. The trends from this survey show an overall decline in employee trust and a huge increase in the number of respondents who ‘worry about experiencing prejudice, discrimination or racism’ – the UK increased by 11 points to 53 in a single year.[xi]

Andrew Griffin has written extensively on crisis communications. He divides reputational risks between internal vs external, and further categorises between incident-led and issue-led.[xii] It would be sensical to classify negative media coverage of staff discrimination as an ‘internal issue-led ’ issue. He comments they are “perhaps the hardest of all risks to manage, because they usually arise from some sort of failure which calls into question the organisation’s behaviour, performance, governance, strategy, values and even purpose”.[xiii]

What makes Pregnant Then Screwed’s tactics so effective (and so harmful to the business) is that they create a situation that Andrew Griffin’s points out is hard to manage: scandal. Griffin argues that organisations must act quickly and put in place an action plan to show they are doing the right thing, as ‘words are never enough’.[xiv]

Rhetoric: ancient ideas for modern times

How to persuade others and put forward your argument has dominated human thinking for thousands of years, long before communications and public relations were formalised into an industry.

Chris Tucker writes that Greek Philosopher Aristotle’s (384-322 BC) seminal work The Art of Rhetoric “can be viewed as an early communication handbook”.[xv] Tucker explains that Aristotle’s formula for creating an effective persuasive argument required three elements or ‘proofs’: ethos, logos and pathos.

Ethos is how credible the speaker is; we are less likely to trust or believe someone who has a history of lying, and more likely to listen to someone who is perceived as an expert.

It may seem natural to use facts and hard data to demonstrate that a particular viewpoint is undisputable. This was Aristotle’s second proof of a rhetorical argument, Logos. However, facts can be manipulated and simply wrong. The infamous Vote Leave bus in the 2016 EU referendum splashed the erroneous slogan: We send the EU £350 million a week, let’s fund our NHS instead.[xvi]

The final component is pathos, and using emotion or sentiment in your ability to persuade. The scholar Ronald D Smith points out that this can draw on positive emotions, such as love, virtue or even sex. However, it can also draw on negative emotions, such as fear or guilt[xvii] – many of us will remember the shock tactics used in the road safety campaign, THINK! by the UK Government.[xviii]

The infamous Vote Leave bus in the 2016 EU referendum splashed the erroneous slogan: We send the EU £350 million a week; let’s fund our NHS instead.[xvi]

The final component is pathos, and using emotion or sentiment in your ability to persuade. The scholar Ronald D Smith points out that this can draw on positive emotions, such as love, virtue or even sex. However, it can also draw on negative emotions, such as fear or guilt[xvii] – many of us will remember the shock tactics used in the road safety campaign, THINK! by the UK Government.[xviii]

Utilising rhetoric in modernity: making an impact

The Dad Shift campaign for paternity leave is a great example of how to use all three elements of rhetoric (ethos, logos and pathos).

The men’s magazine GQ covered their initial publicity stunt, transforming statues with baby carriers. Their article, entitled The Great British paternity leave scandal, starts with the harrowing and emotive tale (pathos) of The Dad Shift co-founder, George Gabriel, taking his baby daughter to hospital after she suffered a fractured skull at six weeks old.

There’s information from a credible expert (ethos) on the changes that happen to the brain for new parents (both male and female). It also provides factual detail (logos) on the UK entitlement to paternity leave with a comparison to other countries.

The new bard? Communicators as storytellers

LinkedIn was awash with mockery a few months back as big tech started hiring ‘Chief Storytellers’. McKinsey recently decried The CEO’s Role as Chief Storyteller and how it was now essential that leaders provide a consistent narrative to stakeholders.

Paul Smith recently came up with the CAR method for business leaders on storytelling – Context, Action, Result. He drew inspiration from the structure of fairy tales and the simplicity of ‘once upon a time’ and ‘they lived happily ever after’ narrative.[xix]

An example of the CAR method can be seen in a recent campaign by the parental rights organisation, Pregnant Then Screwed. They created an online career shredder, where they invited women to shed their own CVs in solidarity with women who face maternity discrimination. The campaign provided the Context: around 74,000 women lose their jobs each year simply for procreating. The campaign had a clear Action stage — requesting fellow women to publicly shred their CVs and share on LinkedIn. The intended Result was demanding employers provide improved parental rights for their staff, including better paternity leave and flexible working.[xx]

Making an impact

One of Bregman’s great examples of ‘moral ambition’ is the nineteenth-century Fabians who campaigned for many of our working rights (votes for women, eight-hour working day, progressive taxation). However, Bregman notes that key to their success is using relatively modern tactics of communication. They wrote pamphlets in Plain English, made their design visually appealing and gained considerable media attention.[xxi]

I believe that The Dad Shift and Pregnant Then Screwed have buckets of Rutger’s “moral ambition” and, like the Fabians, are using ancient and modern communication tactics. Their actions have already resulted in legislative change, with the updated Employment Rights Act now providing paternity rights from day one of employment, benefiting an estimated 32,000 fathers.[xxii]

I would love to see a new series of The Thick of IT with a heroic PR character (possibly a working mother). In the meantime, I am reminded of one of Bregman’s favourite quotes:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” ~ Margaret Mead.[xxiii}

So, if you’re reading this, please start thinking about how you can use communications theory and tactics to propel positive change. As Bregman points out, your career is short, consisting of around 80,000 hours. How are you going to make a difference?[xxiv]

ARTICLE ENDNOTES

About the CIPR Professional PR Diploma 

The PR Diploma is a Master’s level qualification for more experienced practitioners who are looking to underpin what they do with theory and contemporary models.  Topics include PR strategy and planning, content management, media and engagement, measurement and evaluation, and PR leadership and process improvement. 

You have two years to complete it, but with PR Academy you set your own study pace, and many students finish in about ten months. 

Read our Complete Guide to CIPR Qualifications

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