ARCHIVEHow TBWA Paris Turned French Frogs Into a Brexit Protest
How TBWA Paris Made Frogs Against Brexit France's Most Memorable Public Interest Film Frogs Against...
Burns and Smiles Challenges France to See Different
'See Different' is a 2018 French public service film campaign created by TBWA Paris for Burns and Smiles, the French advocacy association supporting burn survivors, using a cinema-based narrative to challenge the way French society perceives people living with severe burns and inviting audiences to support the association directly.
Burns and Smiles published the campaign in France in May 2018, marking its second collaboration with TBWA Paris following the award-winning 2017 'Halloween' film. Where 'Halloween' followed a burn survivor during a single night when a costume mask granted him the anonymity to experience ordinary social acceptance, 'See Different' expanded the emotional territory. The new film uses a quietly devastating metaphor: a severely burned man explains that he has never seen the endings of films such as Titanic because the stares and discomfort of fellow cinema-goers force him to leave before the credits roll. The premise transforms a universal, everyday pleasure into a measure of social exclusion, making the campaign's argument accessible and immediate to any French audience member who has ever sat in a darkened theatre.
The campaign's call to action directed audiences in France to support Burns and Smiles through its website and social channels under the hashtag #SeeDifferent, positioning the association as both a voice for the estimated 400,000 people who experience burns in France each year, according to data cited by Little Black Book Online, and a practical resource offering peer support, professional events, cosmetic-procedure assistance, and an emergency fund. The Clapboard Score for 'See Different' is 68 out of 100, reflecting strong creative intent and cultural relevance within the French public service category.
Burns and Smiles is an advocacy and support association founded by Laurent Gaudens, himself a burn survivor who was severely burned at the age of four, according to reporting by Little Black Book Online. That founding biography is not incidental to the campaign's strategy: it grounds the organisation's creative ambition in lived experience rather than institutional distance, giving TBWA Paris a brief rooted in authentic insight rather than generic cause-marketing convention.
The strategic challenge was not simply to raise funds but to shift a deeply ingrained social reflex. In France, approximately 400,000 people experience burns each year, with around 10,000 classified as severe burn victims, as reported by Little Black Book Online. Despite that scale, public conversation about the social consequences of visible difference remains limited. Organisations such as La Ligue Nationale contre le Cancer and similar health-advocacy bodies in France have demonstrated that emotional narrative film can move public opinion on stigmatised conditions, but the space for campaigns addressing visible disfigurement specifically remained relatively underserved at the time of the campaign's release.
TBWA Paris chose cinema as the strategic vehicle precisely because it is a shared cultural commons in France. French cinema attendance and cultural attachment to film as a national art form gave the metaphor immediate legibility. By placing a burn survivor inside a scenario every French adult recognises — a crowded screening of a beloved film — the agency collapsed the distance between the audience's comfortable world and the burn survivor's daily reality. The strategic continuity with the 2017 'Halloween' film, and the reappearance of actor Boris Ravaine, also allowed the campaign to build on existing emotional equity rather than starting from zero, reinforcing Burns and Smiles as a consistent advocacy voice in France.
Nicolas Galoux directed 'See Different' for TBWA Paris and production company TBWA\ELSE, bringing a restrained, observational visual approach to material that could easily have become melodramatic. The film's power resides precisely in what Galoux chooses not to show: the reaction shots, the awkward glances, the slow social pressure that drives the protagonist from his seat are conveyed through performance and framing rather than explicit dramatisation, trusting the audience to complete the emotional argument themselves.
Director of photography Fabien Peborde shot the film, contributing a naturalistic visual texture that anchors the narrative in recognisable French everyday life rather than the heightened aesthetic of conventional public service announcements. Post-production was handled internally by TBWA\ELSE, with Anne-Claire Girard supervising post-production, Arthur Paux serving as colour grader, and Grégory Lefevre as retoucher — a tightly integrated production pipeline that maintained creative coherence from shoot to final delivery, as documented by Clapboard.
Actor Boris Ravaine, who appeared in the preceding 'Halloween' campaign in 2017, returned for 'See Different', a casting continuity that carries its own creative argument. His reappearance signals that Burns and Smiles is building a sustained platform around a single human story rather than cycling through interchangeable representatives, lending the campaign series a cumulative emotional weight. Creative leadership on the campaign came from Benjamin Marchal and Faustin Claverie, with agency supervisors Luc Bourgery and Natacha Chevallier overseeing the project, according to Clapboard. Production coordination was handled by Teva François and Léa Gosselin, with graphics by James Champ and technical management by Benjamin Piton, completing a production team whose collective craft elevated a modest-scale public service film into a piece of genuine cinematic storytelling.
No independently verified audience measurement or campaign performance data for 'See Different' is publicly available beyond the creative and award record documented at the time of publication. What the public record does confirm is the institutional credibility the Burns and Smiles and TBWA Paris partnership had already established: the preceding 2017 'Halloween' film won a D&AD Yellow Pencil and three Cannes Lions, as reported by Little Black Book Online, setting a benchmark against which 'See Different' was inevitably measured by the French creative industry and international awards community.
Structurally, 'See Different' is engineered for effectiveness across the metrics most relevant to public service film. The cinema metaphor generates immediate narrative comprehension, lowering the cognitive threshold for engagement. The personal testimony format, delivered by Boris Ravaine directly to camera, creates parasocial intimacy that drives the campaign's call to action — directing audiences to Burns and Smiles' website and social channels — with more authority than a third-party narrator could achieve. In France, where the association operates its peer support, professional events, and emergency fund for a community of severe burn survivors estimated at around 10,000 people annually according to Little Black Book Online, incremental growth in public awareness translates directly into practical support for an underserved population. The campaign's Clapboard Score of 68 out of 100 reflects this structural soundness alongside an acknowledgement that the campaign's reach, as a single-asset film without a documented paid media strategy, was constrained by the resources typical of French public interest associations operating at this scale.
'See Different' is a 2018 French public service film campaign created by TBWA Paris for Burns and Smiles. It uses a cinema metaphor to challenge public perceptions of burn survivors in France, following a severely burned man who is forced to leave screenings early because of the stares of other audience members, under the hashtag #SeeDifferent.
Nicolas Galoux directed 'See Different' for TBWA Paris and TBWA\ELSE. Director of photography Fabien Peborde shot the film, with post-production supervised by Anne-Claire Girard. Creative leadership came from Benjamin Marchal and Faustin Claverie, as documented by Clapboard.
Laurent Gaudens is the founder of Burns and Smiles and a burn survivor himself, having been severely burned at the age of four, according to Little Black Book Online. His personal experience directly shapes the association's advocacy mission and informed the authentic, survivor-centred strategy behind both the 2017 'Halloween' and 2018 'See Different' campaigns.
'See Different' is the second collaboration between Burns and Smiles and TBWA Paris, following the 2017 'Halloween' film. Both campaigns feature actor Boris Ravaine and share the objective of changing public perceptions of burn survivors in France. The 2017 'Halloween' film won a D&AD Yellow Pencil and three Cannes Lions, as reported by Little Black Book Online.
Burns and Smiles supports a community within a country where approximately 400,000 people experience burns each year, including around 10,000 classified as severe burn victims, according to Little Black Book Online. The association offers peer support, professional events, cosmetic-procedure assistance, and an emergency fund to those living with the consequences of severe burns in France.
'See Different' holds a Clapboard Score of 68 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong creative concept and cultural relevance within the French public service category, balanced against the constraints of a single-asset film format without a documented large-scale paid media strategy, which limits its measurable reach and impact assessment.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
