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Ad Dispels Myths About Facial Disfigurements

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The ad seeks to dispel the myth that people with facial disfigurements are as bad as they seem. The agency motivated by the continual projection in films of people with disfigurements as bad guys, came up with this beautiful and sensitively crafted ad that emphatically states, never to prejudge a person by the way he looks and that true beauty emanates from within.

DDB creative director, giving reasons for making this spot said, “Whenever you see an unusual looking face on the big screen, you automatically assume something nasty is going to happen.”

In the ad, a car drives up to a woman’s house in pouring rain. The woman is seeing laying a table and tasting the juice, indicating that she is awaiting somebody. The man, his face disfigured by burn scars gets out of the car and knocks on the door. Not expecting someone so early, the woman is perplexed and wonders who is at the door, adding to the suspense. She nervously opens the door and is fleetingly taken aback by the sight of the man standing in front of her.

Realizing that her friend has come early for the dinner appointment, she gathers her composure, smiles and engulfs him in a hug and as he steps inside and closes the door. A tagline appears, “What did you think would happen?”

Most viewers would feel that something ominous is going to happen and in similar scenes in films or on television, ten times out of ten, it would happen. The twist in the end is to provoke viewers not to prejudge people. The agency’s creative team member Chris Lapham said, “The viewer’s mind must make the leap and assume something bad or sinister is about to happen. We were very careful not to lead the viewer too much. Everything in the piece is perfectly plausible. At the end of the day, it’s just a guy, who happens to be disfigured, going round to a friend’s for dinner.”

The ad is an indictment of that section of society which is obsessed with physical perfection and considers it to be the epitome of goodness and everything good and a tribute to the millions of people, who have serious facial disfigurement and who face prejudiced and off-putting connotations, not to speak of social ostracism, throughout their lives.

The ad directed by Jim Weedon, features Downtown Abbey actress, Michelle Dockery, burn victim Leo Gormley, who was burned in an explosion at age 14 and subsequently endured 120 operations.

DDB Creative director Aaron McGurk said, that they were watchful to keep the eerie setting of the ad, low key and subdued.  “We were careful not to be stereotypically ‘horror,’ which is why we didn’t choose a cabin in the woods and why there’s no thunder and lightning. We wanted the spot to feel filmic based on the bigger campaign thought about how people with disfigurement are portrayed in film.”

 

Ad Dispels Myths About Facial Disfigurements by
Authored by: Harrison Barnes