SIRE

In the Dutch controversial ads post I told you I couldn’t come up with any more Dutch controversial commercials. But then I was thinking about the SIRE campaigns.

SIRE (Stichting Ideële Reclame) is an independent organisation that tries to create awareness on socials issues such as child abuse or fireworks accidents. Most of the time the subjects are things that play a great role in society but are not really spoken about.

SIRE is non-profit. All the people who work with SIRE do this voluntary, the campaigns are made for free and even the commercials and ads are getting aired and placed for free.

Over the years SIRE had different campaigns. I will talk about the ones that made the greatest impression on me, starting with one involving children.

SIRE had made a campaign called: “Kinderen in de kou.” (2007) It basically means forgotten children. The campaign is showing different kinds of abuse such as, children who get beaten, ignored children and children who are being sexually abused. With this campaign SIRE is trying to get people to open their eyes and help children like this. 

In this commercial you see a girl being pulled to her room by something invisible, in the room the invisible person is starting to undress her. Then you hear: “Ik zie ik zie wat jij niet ziet.” “I can see I can see what you can’t see.” This phrase actually comes from a children’s game where you need to guess what the other person is seeing.

This just gives me goosebumbs. It really made me sick seeing this. Even though I don’t really want to see this. SIRE made a good decision by starting this campaign. People find this commercial so horrendous that they take action against child abuse.

In the next post I will discuss another campaign by SIRE.