We’re living through tumultuous, polarising times, with enormous cultural, societal, political and environmental shifts underway, even before the pandemic, that are having a fundamental effect on how businesses and organisations show up in the world.

So what’s the role of creativity in this landscape? Can big creative ideas and creative campaigns really make a difference in breaking down borders, erasing taboos and reflecting diverse cultural nuances?

And – with so many Cannes Lions-winning campaigns over recent years being focused on the most serious and earnest of topics and problems – when times feel heavy, is there still a role for humour and levity in creative execution?

Featuring equalities activist Lord Wooley, founder and Director of Operation Black Vote and the former Chair of UK Government’s Race Disparity Unit.

During this panel, we discuss how PR needs to shift its focus from broadcasting rational bits of information to selling moments of meaningful benefit. We'll focus on how PR can become an ally of sales and marketing, and how creativity can be harnessed within PR to deliver powerful and persuasive stories that change people's behaviours. The panel will explore why it's time to rise up and redefine the category and put an end to PR that serves nobody but itself.

But are born creative specialists in PR a good thing? Is experience of dealing directly with journalists and managing accounts in the early years of your career still a requisite for knowing which ideas will fly? Or does the changing landscape of communications – the dominance of social and digital and the blurring between paid, owned and earned – mean that kind of traditional agency grounding is no longer so important? Could having a whole new discipline within PR from the start even help solve PR’s diversity problem by attracting a broader range of more young people into the industry?

And as the new generation of PR creatives beds in, who owns creativity in agencies, now? Can you or should you create a creative culture throughout an agency, or do you need a dedicated ECD and creative department to lead on creativity?