‘The stunt is theatre with consequences’: what PR can learn from the art of outrage

The PR industry bubble loves to talk about itself. Gossip, awards, the next throwaway influencer activation engineered to blip on TikTok for 24 hours before sinking into the feed. Too often, the industry mistakes noise for impact. We live in a silo where the metrics matter more than the meaning.

But,  history tells us something different. The stunt has always been theatre with consequences. Risky, inconvenient, sometimes ridiculed at the time — but often the spark that pushes culture forward. Forgetting that history leaves us blind to what a stunt can really do.

For my BBC Radio 4, Archive on 4 documentary, Outrage Inc, I went back through the archive to examine the protest stunt: the deliberate acts of disruption that forced attention, created spectacle, and seeded change. 

I wanted to look beyond the rage and analyse the DNA of the publicist, the craft, the imagination, the conviction behind these moments. What I found has more to teach PR than any brainstorm deck.

Rage fuels the flames

The suffragettes were not vandals with matches. They were master tacticians who understood the media economy of Edwardian Britain. Papers like the Daily Mail and Daily Express were in circulation wars, selling millions of copies at a penny. Respectful petitions didn’t sell papers. Outrage did.

The Pankhursts knew this. Smashing windows, torching postboxes — these weren’t random acts. They were calculated interventions to force their cause into every parlour. Editors vilified them, but printed them because sensation sold. In today’s language, they hacked the algorithm.

The lesson? Emotion drives visibility. Rage and indignation fuel virality. The suffragettes knew how to light the match.

Persistence is power

At Greenham Common, women camped for almost two decades outside a nuclear base. They cut fences, sang at the wire, danced on silos. Some of it was planned, much of it improvised. The genius was persistence: they kept creating new images, fresh moments for the cameras, ensuring the public always had something to talk about. For brands, the message is simple: a single splash won’t shift the culture. Stamina and iteration build legacy.

Humour detonates

During Miss America, 1968, feminists were furious at objectification staged a farce. They walked on the boardwalk in Atlantic City with a 'freedom trash can' for bras and girdles. It was absurd, but it worked. The spectacle turned the pageant into a joke, and the joke became the headline.

Humour, used with precision, is a mind bomb. You laugh first, then the meaning detonates. It sticks. For PRs chasing memorability, humour is not fluff — it’s a scalpel.

Engineer discomfort

In Germany, the activist collective Political Beauty built a replica Holocaust memorial outside AfD politician Björn Höcke’s home. He had said the “wounds of the Holocaust should heal". Their answer was concrete blocks — a daily reminder that some wounds must never be allowed to close.

It was engineered discomfort. Lawsuits, counter-protests, outrage from both sides — but it stuck. People remember what unsettles them.

The lesson for PR

The headlines eventually fade. The cameras move on. But these stunts endure because they were built with imagination and conviction. They weren’t gimmicks. They were engineered moments that tapped into culture and refused to be ignored.

And the cycle is always the same: condemned in the moment, rehabilitated later, lauded as visionary in hindsight. The suffragettes were branded terrorists, now they’re national heroines. The Greenham women were mocked as “cranks in cardigans,” now they’re honoured as pioneers. Time turns outrage into heritage.

PR should take note. Stop mistaking metrics for meaning. The stunt is not a novelty for an awards deck — it is theatre with consequences. If it isn’t rooted in imagination and conviction, it will fizzle. If it is, it can shift the conversation, redefine a brand, even reshape society.

That’s why I made Outrage Inc. Because outrage, when married with creativity and courage, has never been a sideshow. It is, and always will be, the main act of change. We can all reflect on the lessons of those who existed before us and perhaps take something away from the craft they forged

Outrage Inc aired on BBC Radio 4, Saturday 23 August at 8pm, and is available on BBC Sounds.