INSIGHT:
When we were young, we knew phone numbers by heart. We memorized them by dialing them repeatedly on our house device. Today, we rely heavily on our mobile phone contact list. Unfortunately, that also applies to children. They never had the need to learn numbers by heart. But what if there’s an emergency and they don’t have their phone with them…Are they actually able to contact their parents?
IDEA:
That’s why Missing Children Europe launched ReMumber: a free app that changes a smartphone's unlocking code into a phone number & helps kids to remember it. First, parents have to download and setup ReMumber on a smartphone/tablet. Then, each time their kid unlocks the device, he/she needs to fill in his/her dad or mum’s phone number. By manually typing this number dozens of times a day, it becomes a physical routine and the child finally knows the number by heart.
Execution
We developed a website where people could see how ReMumber works and learn more about Missing Children Europe. But without any media budget, our entire campaign rested on PR. So on July 6th 2016 - at the beginning of the summer holidays – we sent the press release to national press and organised interviews with radio shows, blogs, etc. We encouraged Belgians to download the app and to share the initiative on social networks with the hashtag #ReMumber. Another 14 countries wanted to participate and they launched the app in their respective countries based on the Belgian material and mechanic.
The PR media value reached 336.355 euros in Belgium alone, which is far bigger than expected. In a few hours, the campaign became trending topic on social networks. Missing Children Europe received great feedback from users and was proposed different free media opportunities to communicate about the campaign during summer. But most of all, with hundreds of downloads in the first week, we helped a lot of children to remember their parents’ phone numbers in a couple of days. And a lot of families spent their holidays with ease of mind, knowing their children could contact them in any kind of emergency.
The Situation
Missing Children Europe wanted to sensitize families about the danger of children who get lost during holidays. As this campaign had no media budget, it was very important to focus on PR in order to push as many journalists as possible to spread the word. Thanks to the PR-launch, the app was downloaded hundreds of time within the first week and beside the massive sensitization to the problematic, children were able to memorize their parents’ phone number in couple of days.
The Strategy
Today’s technology is part of children’s lives. From a very early age, they come into contact with smartphones. But this smartphone -which kids use so quickly and naturally- is the exact reason why younger generations don’t know phone numbers by heart anymore. There’s an entire contact list in a smartphone, so why would they, right?
So what better way to reach these kids than by actually using their own smartphone as a medium. We've noticed children can enter their smartphone passcode in a blink of an eye because they do it dozens of times a day. That's why we made an app that changes this random passcode into the phone number of their parents. This way they gradually memorise it until they know the number by heart. Because 1 in 5 children go missing during holidays, we launched the campaign at the beginning of July, right before the school holidays.