Missing Kids Stamps
Enfant-Retour Quebec (Missing Children’s Network)
Issue 28 | September 2013
Agency
Lowe Roche
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director: Sean Ohlenkamp Creative Director/Art Director: Mark Mason Creative Director/Copywriter: Jane Murray Designer: Joel Derksen Illustrator: Jennifer Duong
Production Team
Agency Producer: Neal Owusu Sound Design: Keen
Other Credits
Strategic Planner: Jonathan Daly Account Supervisor: Laura Carrington
Date
April 2013
Background
The Missing Children’s Network was
one of Canada’s leading child safety organisations, focused on preventing child abduction and exploitation. Part of their mission was to publicise the names and images of missing children in the hope of reuniting families.
Almost every media channel had been used at some point to raise awareness of missing children. Except one. The stamp.
Idea
The idea was to put pictures of missing children on stamps.
Through the website, users could customise, order and purchase real Canadian postage stamps with the faces of missing children. They could choose which child they wanted and buy stamps for domestic, US or worldwide usage.
The stamps were mailed to the purchaser and then were mailed on around the world and, possibly, into the hands of someone who might recognise the child.
Instead of Missing Kids Network sending a message to Canadians, they found a way to let Canadians turn every message they sent into a message of hope.
Results
Missing Kids Stamps brought hope back to families.
With hundreds of stamp booklets sold and email footers downloaded, Missing Kids Stamps attracted significant media interest.
As Pina Arcamone, Director General of the Missing Children’s Network, explained, “This small gesture is a reminder to those families that while their children may still be missing, they are not forgotten.”
Our Thoughts
On pages 22-23, in the context of BMF’s ‘Mailbooks for Good’ idea, I have written about how mail can become, indeed is becoming part of social media, a C to C channel through which people can share issues with each other and become involved. This is people understanding a message and passing it on as their own.
There have been plenty of examples of mail getting talked about in social media because the idea is arresting or entertaining but this is something else, active involvement in a cause through a letter.
Incidentally, I have long banged on about the stamp as a potentially remarkable platform for advertising and now suddenly a batch of ideas come along with the stamp as poster including the TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris campaign featured on pages 36-37.