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National digital signage campaign launches to promote Child Rescue Alert initiative in the UK

A nationwide digital out-of-home campaign featuring TV personality Stephen Fry has launched this week across the U.K., aimed at promoting awareness of and participation in the Child Rescue Alert initiative.

February 17, 2016

A nationwide digital out-of-home campaign featuring TV personality Stephen Fry has launched this week across the U.K., aimed at promoting awareness of and participation in the Child Rescue Alert initiative, according to an announcement from Grand Visual. 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, analyzes the data and automates the delivery of localized maps and messages calling for "local heroes" to sign up and "help bring a high-risk child home." Through dynamic creative optimization, 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, Grand Visual said. 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 its postal workers' PDAs to receive the alerts.

"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," Grand Visual founder Neil Morris said in the announcement. "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."

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 more than 60 million impressions during the two-week period. Additional activity includes press, TV and online.

Fry, a TV presenter and patron to the charity Missing People, said: "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."