In the UK, someone goes missing every 90 seconds. But people no longer take notice of ‘Missing’ posters, because they see so many of them, so frequently. At the same time, the design of ‘Missing’ posters has never fundamentally changed. That’s despite our understanding of human behaviour and the technology at our disposal coming on leaps and bounds in recent years. Our brief was to redesign ‘Missing’ posters to get people to take notice of them and in doing so make them more effective. We only had our hero media sites for one day, so we had to make as big a splash as possible in that time.

The project earned 300+ articles when launched and reached a wide range of press and media coverage both nationally and internationally. This Included prime-time reports by ITV and the BBC, including interviews with the family of Leah Croucher, one of the featured missing children. It also received featured coverage on CBS in the U.S. and was widely discussed on social media, mostly on Twitter where the majority of people perceived it as a positive innovation. Research by Ocean Outdoors said that overall, the project created over £1 Billion in earned media.

These far more effective posters are in the process of being rolled out by the charity across all sites as standard procedure and police forces have requested to adopt the system for their posters. The campaign further helped the brand to be to be perceived as one of the most innovative, hard-working and culturally relevant charities in the UK.

The posters ran in the UK for one day on International Missing Children’s Day. (25th May 2022)

We launched the posters on integrational missing children’s day on large format screens, earning National and integrational press coverage generating over 300 news articles and according to Ocean Outdoor, generated over £1 Billion in earned media.