The 2023 ERIF Sinterklaas Brand & Product Study is out now!

ENGLISH I NEDERLANDS | FRANÇAIS | DEUTSCH 

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In 2023, the European Race and Imagery Foundation (ERIF) publishes its eighth Sinterklaas Brand and Product study, Playing Hide & Seek with (Zwarte) Piet, based on data collection from the 2022 Sinterklaas season. Download the full report here. 

About the report

The study was initiated in 2015 by ERIF, and has been conducted year-on-year from then to form a longitudinal study on the evolution of the mainstream marketing and consumption of the Sinterklaas celebration—specifically the appearance of the Zwarte Piet character—in relation to ongoing Dutch anti-racism campaigning. The fieldwork is comprised of both quantitative online data collection and qualitative in-store observations. 

Summary of the key results

• Additional fieldwork was undertaken in northern and southern regions of the Netherlands to increase the representativeness of the qualitative observations, revealing in turn that grade 7 (cartoon Piets using stereotypical depictions of Black people) Sinterklaas items continue to be in wide circulation in certain parts of the Netherlands;
• Anti-racism demonstrators across the Netherlands took to the streets again to necessarily protest against the use of blackface during Sinterklaas in November 2022, after COVID-19 caused a hiatus on Sinterklaas parades between 2020 and 2021;  
• Using the search term “Piet” in addition to “Sinterklaas” in the online data collection increases the number of Sinterklaas products that can be analysed;
• There was a slight decline in the share of grade 1 (products without any reference to the Piet character) products between 2021 and 2022;
• The prevalence of grade 2 (shadows, outlines and/or obscured depictions of the Piet character) products continued to grow between 2021 and 2022, especially online;
• Despite their prevalence in physical stores, grade 7 products also continue to shrink in response to the growth of other grades’ share of the quantitative data collection; 
• Christmas continues to grow in popularity and commercialised viability during the same period, demonstrating the potential for a serious commercial rival in terms of winter and fantasy-oriented festivities targeting children. 

Find out more and download the 2023 report here.

Contact us

If you have any questions about the research or above announcement, please contact Bel and Martijn via info@erifonline.org 

About ERIF

Founded in 2013, the European Race and Imagery Foundation (ERIF) aims to re-imagine a more inclusive Europe. We expose and criticize dominant narratives of belonging and racist imagery and amplify stories of resistance and towards liberation. All our activities seek to remedy how mainstream anti-racism neglects the histories, views and creativity of Black people and people of colour. In this perspective, ERIF produces events (conferences and workshops), social media campaigns (e.g. our Quotes of Resistance campaigns), online content (blog posts and toolkits) and research projects and publications (e.g. the annual Sinterklaas report; a special issue for Darkmatter journal about blackface in Europe), with the aim of amplifying, connecting across countries and facilitating the accessibility of antiracism efforts by activists, scholars, artists and (non-)citizens.