Like Father, like Son: Safe At Home Foundation's Visceral New Campaign Against Domestic Violence

Gyro and legendary baseball figure Joe Torre’s Safe at Home Foundation is out with a new campaign promoting its mission to end domestic violence. It’s said to be the organization's largest campaign to date and the first in more than a decade.

The main spot in the campaign opens on a parked car near an open field on a gloomy, rainy day. As the camera zooms in closer, a man in the driver’s seat can be seen and heard screaming into a mobile phone, while a somewhat younger version of himself is seen in the back seat parroting the driver’s words.

“Why do you make me do this!” screams the man in the front seat holding the phone, followed by the man behind him who then yells the same thing, but seemingly to himself, as he has no phone.

The driver lashes out repeatedly into the phone, “You disgust me!” “You make me sick!” “You’re a terrible mother!” “I hate you!” with each phrase mimicked by the younger man.

Then as the camera pans to a side view of the car as the driver screaming repeatedly into the phone, the man in the back is seen for what he really is—the toddler son of the screaming driver, listening intently to every utterance of verbal abuse his father screams into the phone.

The spot ends with a graphic: “What they see, they become,” and a call to action to end “the cycle of violence.”

Gyro, which worked pro bono on the effort, created the campaign in association with production companies Unit9 and Rock Paper Scissors. Unit 9’s Michelle Craig directed the TV spot.

Ads will run on CBS, A&E and other networks. Print and online will appear in national publications and Web sites. Out-of-home began appearing earlier this year.

Torre and his wife Ali created the Safe at Home Foundation in 2002.

 

 

 

2 comments about "Like Father, like Son: Safe At Home Foundation's Visceral New Campaign Against Domestic Violence".
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  1. M L from Student, April 3, 2017 at 2:22 p.m.

    I thought this campaign was very interesting and so true in what the message was. As the author of the article explained it was of a man in a car who appeared to be yelling at his wife on the phone while the man in the backseat was repeating what he was yelling. But when the camera comes to a side view you see that it’s a little boy who is sitting there silently taking everything that his father is saying to his mother. When I was reading the article I was a bit confused when reading the author explain the commercial so I looked up the video to understand what really happened in the commercial. But nonetheless, it was a good campaign and even had a call to action at the end after the commercial says, “What they see, they become.”

  2. Joseph Mansell from ASU, April 4, 2017 at 1:27 a.m.

    I really loved this video advertisement that was put out by Gyro. I think that there is a lot of intelligent minds that came together to create this advertisement with the way that they had used the video for an outlet for knowledge, and a powerful visualization for the victims of domestic violence. In the video there was a imitation of the same person in the front and back seat of a car. The mood was definitely set with the gloomy and rainy weather, representing sadness and despair. As the front seat version of the person who was yelling very harsh, intimidating, and violent slurs, the person in the back was repeating that completely. Paying attention to detail its noticeable that only the person in the front seat has a phone. As the video begins to shift the viewpoints around the car, the other mimicking person becomes a child. The representation of this is to get at children who not only inherit their parents DNA, they also inherit their choice of words and actions from the people who brought them up. Domestic violence is a serious issue in many places; some don’t have a voice to speak. I worked for a charity in Australia geared toward children who haven’t lived easy lives who have been forced from their home due to domestic violence and it is definitely not a situation that can be understood to the average person who hasn’t been a victim. I think that awareness for an issue like this is really important as well on where to get help. Help, isn’t just for the children and spouses that are affected but the abusers as well, seeking psychological care in order to help them gain the ability to be the parent or spouse that they wish their others could be. The safe at home foundation I think has done an incredible job at getting their point across.

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