Michelle Dockery: The Spot: Beauty and the Beast DDB's PSA about facial disfigurement exposes the ugly face of prejudice By Tim Nudd (AD WEEK)

IDEA: DDB in London has worked for years with Changing Faces, a U.K. charity that assists people with disfigurements. Recently, the agency noted a disturbing phenomenon: In films, people with facial disfigurements are almost always bad guys. "Whenever you see an unusual looking face on the big screen, you automatically assume something nasty is going to happen," said DDB creative director Chris Lapham.

This seemed like a good insight, particularly for a cinema spot. The agency hired Downton Abbey actress Michelle Dockery, burn victim Leo Gormley and director Jim Weedon to shoot an ad that would make the audience rethink its kneejerk assumptions about people with disfigurements. The idea even inspired Changing Faces to launch a whole new initiative, Face Equality on Film, calling for balanced portrayals of people with disfigurements in movies.


COPYWRITING: A man whose face is marked by burn scars arrives at a young woman's house in the rain. He parks his car, approaches and knocks. Taken by surprise, the woman answers the door, looking nervous. Momentarily stunned by what she sees, she then smiles and embraces the man—it turns out he's just a friend who's arrived early for dinner. The plot twist is meant to provoke a moment of shock and selfawareness in the viewer—it's prejudice that has filled in the gaps in the story and made it feel sinister. "The viewer's mind must make the leap and assume something bad or sinister is about to happen," said Lapham. "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."





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