Ecorazzi

Want to get people’s attention? Take a classic children’s cartoon from the 80’s and inject world events into it. That’s just what UNICEF did back in 2005 with the classic Smurfs series.

With the permission of the family of the late Belgian creator Peyo, the children’s charity animated a carpet bombing of the Smurf village — along with Smurfette left for dead and Baby Smurf orphaned and crying. The clip ends with the words, “don’t let war destroy the children’s world.” UNICEF made sure to air the commercial on Belgian television only after 9pm so that children wouldn’t run screaming through the house after watching it. “We see so many images that we don’t really react anymore,” said Julie Lamoureux, account director at Publicis, an advertising agency that drew up the campaign for UNICEF Belgium. “In 35 seconds we wanted to show adults how awful war is by reaching them within their memories of childhood.”

Point taken. Check out the commercial below — and to donate to UNICEF, jump here.