The Dad Who Painted His House Black for His Goth Teen Daughter
From the TI archives — originally published September 2014.
Back to school can be a nightmare for kids who don't fit in — the kid dressed head to toe in black, the one who wears a leather collar and wants nothing to do with team sports. Bullying is a serious thing; it can alter how a child sees herself long after the school years end. And sometimes all it takes to counteract it is one parent running extra to make the kid feel okay.
In September 2014, German home-improvement chain Hornbach released a back-to-school commercial that became one of the year's most-shared ads. A goth teenage girl trudges through her school day — nasty glares, exclusion, a frog thrown on her desk — and comes home to a surprise: her dad has painted the entire house black. Because if she loves black, then home should be a place where black feels like it belongs.
The tagline, "Sag es mit Deinem Projekt" — "Say it with your project" — needed no translation. You can still watch the spot (YouTube); the ad was made by Berlin agency Heimat and covered widely at the time, including by Tech Times.
Yes, it's an ad, and yes, it was designed to sell paint. But it landed because it caught something true: the kid who gets mocked at school doesn't need fixing — she needs one place, and one person, where who she is isn't the problem.
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