Partnership helps find missing children

Johannesburg - Media owner

Tractor Outdoor has partnered with Missing Children South Africa (MCSA), an organisation that assists the authorities whenever a child goes missing, to return missing children to their homes.

Tractor Outdoor has offered its countrywide digital billboard network, which reaches more than 30 million consumers each month, to the organisation for free, allowing for rapid communication of new missing child alerts to key areas, as well as high-traffic locations such as highways and petrol stations.

Tractor Outdoor commercial director Remi Du Preez says there is nothing more distressing to a family or community than a child gone missing.

“We approached MCSA with the intent of creating a digital channel that would facilitate fast-tomarket communication close to areas where the child in question was last seen. This approach has been very successful in the United States; media owners and authorities collaborate closely when matters of national concern arise, and we wanted to replicate this model closer to home,” Du Preez says.

Du Preez explains that key to the rapid dissemination of these alerts was designing a seamless process, which included creation of a universal template.

“MCSA can swiftly insert important details such as the child’s name, age, image and area where they were last seen into the template, and share it with Tractor’s content management team. Our team immediately uploads the creative and schedule the campaign roll-out, and the alert is flighted within minutes of its receipt. Technology was key to successful roll-out of this initiative. Tractor’s systems allow artwork to be easily connected across metros at the touch of a button, enabling high-priority content to be flighted before other content. Due to the dynamic nature of our systems, it generally takes less than five minutes for our system to identify available inventory and then upload content for flighting. As time is of extreme importance in missing children cases, this fast turnaround plays a crucial role,” Du Preez says.

Du Preez adds that one of their foundational pillars is to give a voice to those who need it.

“We are excited to roll out many other partnerships of this nature in the months to follow,” he says.

MCSA national coordinator Bianca van Aswegen says the partnership could not have come at a better time for the organisation.

“Over the past few months there has been a frightening spike in the number of child kidnappings, abductions, human trafficking cases and missing children. We have been inundated with new reports daily.

Now with increased and far-reaching exposure that we are able to give these cases via Tractor’s network, and with each additional eyeball on our alerts, we improve the chances of bringing a child home,” she says.

Prior to the partnership with Tractor, MCSA predominantly made use of social media and communitybased flyers to alert communities about children reported as missing.

“With the addition of digital screens, we are not only reaching a wider audience; we also alert more people to the existence of an organisation that assists caregivers should their child go missing, at no cost to them. This is hugely significant for us as an organisation, and we cannot thank Tractor Outdoor enough for offering this service to us, helping make South Africa a safer place for all our children,” she adds. For more information visit the site www.missingchildren.org.za.

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