Missing People Digital OOH. Missing Man Tim Beardsley.
The out-of-home campaign for charity Missing People is returning to cities across the UK from today (Monday), with a series of regionally targeted weekly appeals.

This first appeared in Campaign UK on 16th September 2019.

Missing People Digital OOH

The executions, which will run across transit, city centre and roadside locations, feature the name, age and photo of a missing person, along with the date and location they went missing, plus the free number to call or text for sightings – 116 000.

Missing People DIgital OOH

The push is organised by adtech group QDOT and supported by media owners including JCDecaux, Maxx Media, Limited Space and Perfect Fit Media. It makes use of OpenLoop, QDOT’s dynamic creative optimisation ad server, and its measurement platform PlayTrack, which will provide independent third-party verification for the campaign.

Ross Miller, director of fundraising and communications at Missing People, said: “OOH visibility is so important in our search to find useful information that helps families reconnect with loved ones. OpenLoop allows us to run regionally targeted searches that we can update in a moment and PlayTrack provides full feedback, so we can understand exactly what presence we had across all inventory.

“Digital billboards have proven to be an immensely powerful tool in the search for missing people and we are enormously grateful to the outdoor media owners involved for their incredible support.”

The campaign first launched in 2012 and was conceived by the Outdoor Media Centre (now Outsmart). It last ran about 18 months ago.

Programmatic Advertising Campaign Child Rescue

This piece was first published by The Huffington Post on 05/01/2017. 

The once humble billboard, now a connected powerhouse, looks set to play a key role in the future of smart city infrastructure. The digitisation of the Out of Home media landscape continues apace and provides an important entry point for reaching hyper-connected urban audiences with real-time news and information, alongside smart, contextual, data-driven advertising.

For advertisers, never before has there been so much opportunity to target on-the-go audiences. The ubiquity of full-motion Digital Out of Home (DOOH) screens in cities around the world, combined with rocketing smartphone penetration, wifi provision, and a growing tech-savvy OOH audience, all provide a huge amount of data to inform outdoor creative. Advertisers should be looking at OOH through a new strategic lens.

In fact, we can harness a vast range of data to contextualise OOH copy. There’s location data, and 3rd party data such as weather, social, transit, and news, plus brand owned data including pricing, stock levels, and retail stores. Through these layers of data, we can exploit the ‘Context Effect’ – providing dynamic, data-driven and locally relevant information throughout the customer journey – powerful.

This year there has been some promising signs that the creative mode is moving in the right direction. The datasets have expanded beyond the pure daypart and weather activations that informed DOOH creative in 2015. Campaigns utilising sports data or social media triggers (trends, polls, competitions, direct interaction) have been particularly prevalent, but there has also been cinema listings, traffic reports, pollution levels, travel times, BARB data, and car recognition technology used to inform DOOH creative.

Notable examples from this year include the NSW Cancer Institute using real-time UV levels to deliver sun-safe messages in Australia, Amazon’s people-powered DOOH activity for Catastrophe in the US, which used live twitter polls to trigger themed trailers based on audience preference.

In the UK, the charity Missing People used live registration statistics from its Child Rescue Alert campaign, alongside location and travel data, to deliver real-time, geo-targeted messages. Google’s long-term holding at Old Street roundabout continues to deliver real-time locally relevant information about traffic conditions, weather, nearest cafes, as well as being a living, breathing noticeboard for the East London community.

However, the reality is, we might all be talking about it, but when it comes to harnessing the power of data in the DOOH environment, good examples are still relatively light on the ground. Most campaigns remain one-dimensional, few have leveraged brand owned data or used different datasets to target different touch points during the customer journey. There is definite room for growth here. DOOH could be doing so much more.

The DOOH platform can automate delivery, prioritising advertising which matches pre-set conditions such as time, weather and consumer mindset. For a soft drinks portfolio – this could mean pushing hydrating iced tea on a hot summer’s day, fresh juice and caffeinated drinks during the morning commute, isotonic drinks on gym screens, and details of mixers and cocktails for those heading home after a long day in the office.

Targeting efficiency should also be brought into brand messages as well as media placements, whether that’s tapping into major events, sports tournaments, or topics trending on Twitter. Creative can also target audience segments and mindsets – targeting mums with coffee brands and local cafes during the morning, lunch deals targeting office workers based on the weather, such as soup for cold days, followed by drinks deals available at club nights in the evenings.

Given the serious amount of data available to contextualise copy, it seems strange that DOOH is still lagging behind online in its use of data. The main components of delivering a successful data-informed campaign include; shared ambition, clean, accessible, real-time data, and ad-tech systems to process and deliver copy based on conditions.

The ambition to be more tactical, more relevant and more effective is a given for any brand. Plus, the impressive ROI studies that are starting to amass for data-driven, contextual OOH campaigns makes it a no-brainer. The systems to analyse, manage and deliver real-time data-driven campaigns are already in place with ad-tech platforms such as OpenLoop.

So, that leaves data, and one of the key challenges for 2017 will be finding clean data sources that are accessible in real-time. Data moves extremely fast and a lot of cities are now looking at all the data that gets produced by various systems and how the data is captured. This goes for brands too, as they look to be more strategic in their customer engagement and targeting ability, data streams will become more and more important going forward.

DOOH advertising is in rude health. It cannot be muted, blocked or skipped and provides important touchpoints during the customer journey right up to the point of purchase. The proliferation of devices and data means that advertising messages can now be targeted, tactical and relevant throughout the day. This year has shown some promising signs that the sector is waking up to the opportunity, and we are excited to see where data leads us creatively in 2017.

Programmatic Advertising Campaign Child Rescue

A Digital Out of Home (DOOH) campaign featuring Stephen Fry has launched across the UK today, to promote awareness and participation in the Child Rescue Alert initiative (CRA). The nationwide campaign uses data to drive programmatic creative and deliver real-time, responsive and geo-targeted messages with the aim of increasing the number of people registered to receive text message alerts when a child goes missing in their area.

Masterminded by Grand Visual, the data driven creative uses live registration statistics from the campaign and additional location and travel data, to help tailor messages and encourage recruitment in those areas that need the coverage most. OpenLoop, the DOOH campaign management dashboard, analyses the data and automates the delivery of localised maps and messages calling for “local heroes” to sign up and “help bring a high-risk child home.”

Through dynamic creative optimisation, the campaign is constantly evolving, reacting to data, and fine tuning its message to increase targeting efficiency and help give police the best level of support. The Child Rescue Alert system is managed by the charity Missing People, the National Crime Agency and technology company Groupcall. It was launched in 2014 thanks to funding from players of People’s Postcode Lottery and is being funded in 2016 by Royal Mail, which has registered all of their postal workers’ PDAs to receive the alerts.

The campaign will run on digital billboards across roadside, commuter belts, train stations and shopping malls, nationwide. Outdoor space was donated by Clear Channel, JCDecaux, Outdoor Plus, and Primesight and is expected to achieve over 60 million impressions during the two-week period. Additional activity includes press, TV and online.

Stephen Fry, TV presenter and patron to the charity Missing People, commented:

“I am delighted to be the animated face of this campaign as I believe that Child Rescue Alert should be a national institution – something for everyone to find out about and sign up to. It reminds me of a fire extinguisher – everyone should have one ready to use at a moment’s notice but we all hope that we will never need it.

“The current recruitment drive is delivered by fun and engaging film and a digital billboard campaign incorporating some really clever OpenLoop technology which analyses sign-up data in real-time and optimises the digital billboard messages in order to target recruitment in areas that need better coverage.”

Neil Morris, Founder, Grand Visual says:

“The purpose of programmatic creative is to harness the context effect – data and creativity coming together to communicate in a more resonant and effective way. For the Child Rescue Alert campaign, distribution, playback and reporting are programmatically achieved using real-time audience information and data insight to drive the decision making process. DOOH is the perfect medium for this type of activity, delivering important and timely messages at scale.”

Register to receive Child Rescue Alerts for free at www.childrescuealert.org.uk ot text HERO and your postcode to 85080. Registration by text message costs a standard network text message rate. Obtain bill payer’s permission. Customer care 0208 392 4571. Once registered, it is then free to receive Child Rescue Alerts.

Grand Visual Advertising Week Europe

We attended lots of great sessions on day 3 of Advertising Week Europe, from the IPA session on Big Tech vs Big Ideas to MEC’s session on Creativity and Collaboration. Instead of summarising our take outs from every event we attended, we have decided to share our two highlights from the day.

Clear Channel’s We Love Outdoor session was one of the highlights from today. After two days full of people throwing around well-intentioned buzz-words such as ‘collaboration’ and ‘innovation’ it was a refreshing change to step into a room and hear something a little different. In this session we heard directly from clients on how OOH is helping them achieve their business goals and change peoples lives for the better.

It was particularly lovely to hear from Jo Youle, CEO of Missing People talk about how DOOH has helped grow awareness of the charity from 13% in 2007 to currently over 20% in London. Most importantly it was rewarding to hear how the partnership between ourselves, Clear Channel & the Outdoor Media Centre has helped reunite missing people with their loved ones. Since the campaign began in 2012, we have delivered over 500 regionalised campaigns, and over 50% of the people featured in these campaigns are now reunited with their loved ones.

Also speaking about some great OOH campaigns they have run in conjunction with Clear Channel was Glen Wilson from Posterscope. He spoke about the delightful Art Everywhere project which delivered on its promise to make England a little more attractive – a concept which is now being taken on around the world.

The Princes Trust gave a powerful testimony as to how, through OOH, they are now not only able to reach young people who are in need of their services, but also to reach those crucial donors through great creative and the extensive reach that OOH offers.

A real heartwarming presentation. #WeLoveOutdoor.

Another great session of the day, was from Andrew Millstein, President of Disney Animations who revealed a few secrets about the art of storytelling with Disney. Talking about the so-called ‘dark days’ of Disney from the mid-nineties to early 2000’s, Millstein discussed how, after the Pixar acquisition, they weaved together two distinct strands of success in order to build the Disney we have today.

It was inspirational to hear how they have maintained that creative spark after 93 years, and how they keep pushing themselves to create the stories which inevitably become part of the tapestries of our lives.

Collaboration has certainly been one of the keys to Disney’s success. They maintain this is by instilling ownership of each project within all teams working on Disney films, a process which brings out in everybody a real passion and desire to find the best solution. This process takes time but ultimately it is one of the key elements leading to Disney getting the story right time and time again, and it’s something we can certainly attest to after working on many projects with them.

It’s been such a full on week so far, one more day to go.

A digital out of home campaign helped to reunite missing people with their loved ones

Grand Visual’s partnership with the charity Missing People and the Outdoor Media Centre which delivers weekly appeals for missing people to digital billboards across the UK, has been highly commended at this years BIMA awards held at One Mayfair on 12th September 2013.

The highly coveted BIMA Awards celebrate the best work on the British digital scene. The Missing People Weekly Appeals campaign was recognised by the judges in the category ‘Public Life’ which champions innovative projects or campaigns for public bodies or the public good.  The Weekly Appeals help to reunite missing people with their loved ones using digital outdoor media space donated by the outdoor media industry.

Grand Visual’s Open Loop technology has enabled the Missing People charity to update digital billboard appeals instantly at the touch of a button and also to regionalise their search so that the media is used more effectively with multiple searches running simultaneously. So far the campaign has helped to find 78 people as well as building awareness about the charity’s work and being a source of comfort to those families still searching for loved ones.

Missing People Chief Executive Jo Youle said:

“This partnership has been very powerful in helping us to support families by showing them that everything possible is being done to find their missing loved one, and has helped us bring people home safely.

“We’re so lucky to have this medium available to us.  Our partners’ expertise and resources are invaluable and the ongoing donation of advertising space, from a variety of media owners across the UK, is still astounding.”

On International Missing Children’s Day (25 May), the Outdoor media industry joined the charity Missing People in harnessing the power of Twitter in a dynamic Digital Out of Home campaign with excellent results.

The #bigtweet for Missing Children saw celebrities including Simon Cowell, Stephen Fry, and Lord Sugar joining the search for missing children on Twitter, and throughout the day, appeals and tweets were shared live on digital billboards across the UK in an initiative organised by the Outdoor Media Centre and Grand Visual.

The #bigtweet highlighted 48 children still missing, via 58,000 retweets, and reached an online audience of 40 million with the appeals. The charity published many of these to Outdoor screens across the UK using the OpenLoop dashboard and extending the reach of the campaign to millions more people.

The activity sent the #bigtweet trending on Twitter and increased the charity’s Twitter followers by 14,000. The special day has so far raised £60,000 for the charity Missing People. The charity is now following up all sightings and information received.

The outdoor campaign covers major cities London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow and is supported by JCDecaux, CBS Outdoor, Primesight, Ocean Outdoor, blowUP media, Outdoor Plus, Forrest, Eyecorp, Verifone and Amscreen.

Missing Person DOOH

The outdoor media industry is extending the nationwide digital billboard campaign to find Missing People till June 2013 in an initiative worth £2.88 million in total media value. The extension follows excellent results from the weekly appeals since its launch in July last year and will also see the campaign become regionally targeted in a bid to run more appeals that are locally relevant.

To date the campaign has helped to find 59 Missing People. In addition, the campaign has succeeded in more than doubling the average monthly call rate to the charity, up by 120%. Those making contact through text and email has increased considerably, up by 91%. The weekly digital billboard appeals have also driven online conversations with more than 1,000 photos of the billboards, taken by the public, being shared on social media sites.

The new campaign will allow the charity to target those areas closest to the individual’s hometown or last known whereabouts which means that several appeals can now run simultaneously across different regions. All appeals are delivered via OpenLoop, the Digital OOH campaign management dashboard.

Kate McCann Launches Nationwide DOOH Campaign

Today, Kate McCann has launched the biggest digital billboard campaign in British history, in her first official role as Ambassador of the charity Missing People. Organised by the Outdoor Media Centre and produced by Grand Visual, this unprecedented campaign will see a network of billboards publicise people missing across the UK.

The value of the advertising space, donated by the outdoor advertising industry, is estimated at over £1million and the campaign is estimated to reach over 10 million adults during the summer months when – thanks to the Olympics – Britain will be at its busiest.

New ‘OpenLoop’ technology created by Grand Visual will allow staff and volunteers at the charity Missing People to update the appeals instantly to billboards, with details of the latest high risk individuals.

The copy will include details of individual missing people, creating awareness of the new number to call for sighting – 116 000 – and harnessing the public’s help to join the search.

The campaign will see appeals on donated digital billboards in major cities including London, Birmingham and Glasgow, running across rail and underground networks, on high streets and in shopping centres.

Kate McCann, a new Ambassador for Missing People, said:
“When your child goes missing you want the whole world to stop and join the search. Missing People, the Outdoor Media Centre and its members are providing an unprecedented opportunity to help safely reconnect missing children.

“More than 250,000 people are reported missing each year in the UK – worryingly they could fill the Olympic Stadium three times over. Thankfully, campaigns like this can play a vital part in the search. In May, two youngsters featured in the charity’s ‘Big Tweet for Missing Children’ were found safely.

“The search for Madeleine continues and I am delighted to lend my support as an Ambassador to this practical solution that gives hope to families like mine.”

Bill Wilson, Operations Director at the Outdoor Media Centre said:

“Outdoor advertising is able to reach a mass audience again and again, so it’s really the perfect medium to help the authorities find some of the missing people, whose stories are so important but too often slip under the radar.

“The Outdoor Media Centre and our members feel strongly that we can make a difference to the hundreds of thousands of families who are living each day not knowing when they’ll see their loved ones again.”

Neil Morris, Founder and Managing Director of Grand Visual, the production and creative technology company supporting the campaign commented:

“The Digital Out of Home market is now at a stage where it can really deliver on its key strengths – its ability to react in real-time with relevant copy to a broadcast audience.

“It is the perfect platform for the Missing People’s Initiative – allowing the charity to manage and deliver this impactful campaign from their desktop computer and publish it instantly to a nationwide audience.”

Missing Person DOOH

Missing People, an independent charity which offers a lifeline when someone disappears, has launched a new campaign to raise awareness about their new Europe wide phone number- 116 000.

BBH created a short film which was launched at Downing Street reception hosted by the Home Secretary Theresa May on 23rd May. The film starts airing in cinemas and on MTV from Friday 25th May – to coincide with International Missing Children’s Day.

The film is being supported by a digital out-of-home campaign featuring two executions which explore the disconnect between a young boy who is struggling to call home and a mother who is desperately awaiting his call. Missing People is the point of connection with the number 116 000 appearing on screen with the message: “A lifeline when people go missing.”

This digital outdoor work was developed by Grand Visual using assets from the cinema, TV and print work. The campaign is coordinated by the Outdoor Media Centre and runs across 20 different digital outdoor formats nationally from 25th May.