StopVEO and Publicis Conseil launch The Legacy in France, a 2024 public service film using a striking visual metaphor to break the intergenerational cycle of
ARCHIVEStopVEO Confronts Intergenerational Violence With The Legacy
The Legacy is a 2024 French public service film by StopVEO and Publicis Conseil that dramatises the unconscious transmission of educational violence across generations through the visual metaphor of an inherited oversized hand, released ahead of the International Day for Non-Violence in Education on 30 April.
StopVEO, formally known as Enfance sans violences, launched the campaign on 23 April 2024 across social media, followed by a television debut on 29 April 2024. The film exists in two versions: a long-form cut of two minutes and forty-seven seconds, and a thirty-second television adaptation, giving the campaign reach across both broadcast and digital environments in France. The campaign marks the fourth collaboration between StopVEO and Publicis Conseil, building on a lineage of awareness work that includes the 2020 film "The words I won't say" and the 2021 film "Talks," both created by Publicis Conseil and published in France, as documented by France Publicisgroupe and publicisconseil.fr.
The campaign's central objective is to challenge the normalisation of violence in education — slaps, humiliation, and physical punishment passed from parent to child as inherited behaviour rather than conscious choice. StopVEO has operated in France since its founding in 2016, working to inform adults about these patterns and support the construction of a non-violent society. The Legacy positions this mission at its most emotionally direct: the film follows one man's internal struggle between the violence he has endured and the decision he faces on becoming a father himself. Marco Venturelli, Global CCO and CEO at Publicis Conseil, summarised the campaign's intent plainly, stating "Let's reject the legacy of violence," as cited by publicisconseil.fr. The Clapboard Score for The Legacy is 68 out of 100, reflecting strong creative ambition in the public service category balanced against the absence of publicly verified effectiveness data.
ARCHIVEEducational violence in France persists as a documented public health concern. Despite a 2019 legislative reform in France that banned all corporal punishment in domestic and educational settings, awareness of the law and behavioural change among the adult population remains an ongoing challenge, as noted in reporting by santepubliquefrance.fr. The intergenerational cycle — in which children who experience violence in their upbringing are statistically more likely to reproduce those behaviours as parents — represents the precise mechanism that The Legacy targets as both its subject and its strategic entry point.
StopVEO's positioning in France sits within a fragmented non-violence and child-protection communications landscape where campaigns compete for public and institutional attention alongside organisations such as the Fondation pour l'Enfance and international bodies including Together for Girls, whose research on violence against children across multiple geographies is documented at togetherforgirls.org. These organisations collectively work to shift cultural norms around what constitutes acceptable discipline, and The Legacy enters this conversation by reframing violence not as a parenting choice but as an unconscious inheritance — a legacy as literal and physical as a family trait.
The strategic rationale for anchoring the campaign to the International Day for Non-Violence in Education on 30 April was deliberate and practical. The date provided a nationally and internationally recognised hook that amplified earned media potential and aligned the campaign's messaging with a broader global conversation about childhood violence and education violence. By launching on social media six days before the television broadcast, Publicis Conseil created a sequenced release that allowed digital engagement to build before the campaign reached broader French broadcast audiences. This phased approach reflects a mature understanding of how public service campaigns now travel across platforms in the French media environment.
The Legacy centres on a single, sustained visual metaphor. Every male figure in the film carries an oversized hand — a physical representation of the blows and humiliation inflicted as educational violence — passed silently from father to son across generations as though it were as natural and inevitable as a hereditary trait. The metaphor externalises what social science has documented internally: that violence in childhood development leaves structural marks that shape adult behaviour and parenting choices.
Director Cole Webley helmed the film, with production handled by BIG Productions under producer Raphaël Carassic, working entirely pro bono, as confirmed by publicisconseil.fr and clapboard.com. Webley's direction sustains the metaphor without irony or exaggeration, allowing the oversized hand to function as a quiet, naturalistic presence in domestic scenes rather than a horror device. This restraint is central to the film's emotional effectiveness: the hand is ordinary precisely because the violence it represents has been normalised within the family it depicts.
The film's narrative arc resolves at the moment a man becomes a father for the first time — the generational hinge on which the entire campaign's argument rests. It is at this point that the film asks its central question: if this violence is encoded as deeply as a physical characteristic, what does it take to consciously refuse it? The long-form cut of two minutes and forty-seven seconds affords the story room to develop this tension with genuine dramatic weight, while the thirty-second television version distils the metaphor to its most legible essentials for the French broadcast audience.
The campaign also extended beyond the screen. A free public conference was held at Parisians' venue, noted in awards documentation cited by france.publicisgroupe.com, connecting the film's emotional argument to expert discussion and community engagement. This integration of live event and film reflects Publicis Conseil's approach to treating The Legacy as a cultural intervention rather than a media placement.
The Legacy earned formal recognition from two major international creative awards bodies. The One Show granted the campaign a 2025 Merit award in the Television, VOD, and Online — Over 90 Seconds, Single category, credited to Publicis Conseil Paris, as listed by The One Club. Separately, the Clio Awards granted a 2025 Bronze in Film Craft — Direction to Cole Webley for his work on the film, as publicly identified by BIG Productions and reported via clapboard.com. These two recognitions from distinct judging bodies — one focused on creative idea, one on directorial craft — indicate that The Legacy was evaluated as both conceptually and technically accomplished within the international public service advertising category.
No verified performance data for The Legacy is publicly available. No awareness lift, behavioural change metrics, donation figures, petition activity, reach numbers, impressions, or brand-tracking movement have been confirmed in any public source reviewed by clapboard.com. This absence is common in pro bono public service campaigns where measurement infrastructure is not built into the brief.
Structurally, however, The Legacy operates with three elements that research consistently associates with public service campaign effectiveness: a memorable and scalable visual metaphor, a narrative resolution that places agency with the viewer's own future decisions, and a time-anchored release that connects the film to an established awareness calendar moment in France. The campaign's sequenced social-first, then broadcast launch further maximised organic distribution before paid television placement. These structural properties, combined with international creative recognition, support a Clapboard Score of 68 out of 100 — acknowledging genuine craft and strategic clarity while noting the absence of independently verified impact data.
The Legacy is a 2024 French public service film by StopVEO and Publicis Conseil addressing the intergenerational transmission of educational violence. Directed by Cole Webley and produced pro bono by BIG Productions, the film uses an oversized hand as a visual metaphor for inherited violence, launching on social media on 23 April 2024 ahead of the International Day for Non-Violence in Education.
Cole Webley directed The Legacy for StopVEO. BIG Productions handled production under producer Raphaël Carassic, working entirely pro bono, as confirmed by publicisconseil.fr. The film was designed by Publicis Conseil Paris and exists in both a two-minute-forty-seven-second long-form version and a thirty-second television cut for the French broadcast market.
The Legacy received two international creative awards in 2025. The One Show granted a Merit in Television, VOD, and Online — Over 90 Seconds, Single, credited to Publicis Conseil Paris, according to oneclub.org. The Clio Awards granted a Bronze in Film Craft — Direction to Cole Webley, as identified by BIG Productions and reported by clapboard.com.
The Legacy uses an oversized hand to represent educational violence passed between generations. Each male character in the film carries this physical mark as though it were a hereditary trait, externalising the unconscious transmission of violence in childhood education. The metaphor is depicted naturalistically to reflect how normalised such violence has become within family structures in France.
The Legacy is StopVEO's fourth campaign with Publicis Conseil in France. Previous films include "The words I won't say," published in May 2020, and "Talks," published in October 2021, both addressing normalised educational violence, as documented by france.publicisgroupe.com and publicisconseil.fr. StopVEO has operated under the name Enfance sans violences since its founding in France in 2016.
No verified effectiveness data for The Legacy is publicly available. No awareness lift, reach figures, behavioural change metrics, or campaign performance data have been confirmed in any public source reviewed by clapboard.com. The campaign's impact is assessed structurally through its creative architecture, award recognition, and alignment with the International Day for Non-Violence in Education in France.
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