Pain Without Borders: Stop Pain - Flood

The Facts

Paris – TBWA\MAP has created a new campaign for Douleurs Sans Frontieres (Pain Without Borders) programmes against pain, specifically raising awareness of the cyclical nature of pain.

The TV ad explores the consequences of constant psychological damage or physical harm. The child keeps picking himself up and walking, while finding himself in bad situations over and over again. It soon becomes clear that he is walking on a conveyor belt, giving the viewer a clear depiction of the permanent cycle of pain.

Pain Without Borders: Stop Pain - Flood

Pain Without Borders: Stop Pain - Flood

By creating this campaign, Douleurs Sans Frontieres asks the question: What would it be like if medicine had the power to help our society for the better? To stop pain? Douleurs Sans Frontieres develops many programs to help people in pain, giving thousands of hours of training to local medical teams all over the world.

The campaign launched during Worldwide Day Against Pain with a press conference and introduced the creation of a “Pain Commission” to be presented to the UNO at the end of 2008.

The Impressions

Beautiful! The photo-manipulations in these pieces are extraordinary. They are extremely detailed and visually stunning. I like how the ads show the pain and suffering in various parts of the world. It gives you a dose of reality and aims to connect with the viewer on an emotional level. Like all ads for social causes they do that because it’s likely the only way to get one to donate.

Pain Without Borders: Stop Pain - Fire

Pain Without Borders: Stop Pain - Fire

Pain Without Borders: Stop Pain - Fire

Pain Without Borders: Stop Pain - War

Pain Without Borders: Stop Pain - War

Pain Without Borders: Stop Pain - War

While all the imagery is great, the TV Spot is obviously the best. Why? The imagery at full view doesn’t allow you to take in the details or let viewers get sucked into the chaos. You don’t get to experience the pain to the full extent the animation allows. With the animation you get to feel the emotions of the young boy and experience his pain and sadness of losing his mother. You sense his fear better and you’re emotionally sucked into the story.

So after seeing this ad, the question I ask is: would you donate if it could stop pain? I would.

Critique Agent: "dmadray"  -  http://twitter.com/depthskins

Damian Madray is the founder & creative director of Depthskins Studio & DesignersCouch, his responsibilities are in the areas of branding, web design and project management. Damian’s keen eye is always absorbing design elements around him which lead to the creation of DCQ. More posts by this author.