OUGD505 - Studio Brief 2 - Response to Presentation Feedback

As a response to my presentation and to bulk up my concept, I researched into the milk cartons that were used to raise awareness of missing children in America.

Brian Palmer
www.slate.com

According to Palmer, hundreds of thousands of kids go missing every year in the US.

Etan Patz was one of the firs missing children to appear on milk cartons. This is thought to have started during the 1970s as many Police departments saw missing children as a domestic issue which frustrated parents. Parents soon launched a movement to tackle the crime, coining the crime 'child snatching.'

Pamphlets and flyers were made and sent out to distribute an awareness. Then in 1984 a few dairies began to place pictures of missing children onto milk cartons. People are still unsure which company originally started the campaign, however they helped to distribute the faces of the missing children to a wider audience. The dairy companies often displayed a rotating group of missing children. Dairy farmers doubled as publishers. From reading Palmer's article I learnt that this information also appeared on other packaging such as pizza boxes, grocery bags and junk mail all accompanied by the question, 'HAVE YOU SEEN ME?' Unfortunately no official data on how effective the campaign was was released, however their have been reports that the milk cartons did in fact help children to be returned. People saw the milk carton on their kitchen table every morning so they were forced to think about it.

The campaign was short lived as children and parents were scared from constantly seeing missing people cases on their milk carton, however the campaign did a great job at raising public awareness. An extension and modern take on this concept is the 'AMBER Alert System' which allows for extremely rapid outreach via TV, radio, email, electronic traffic signs and billboards. The spirit of the milk carton program lives on. In 2014, there were reported to be 184 Amber alerts, 154 of them resulted in recovery and 54 of them were directly attributed to the alert system. This shows how successful this method can be.

TODAY:

Amber alerts are text directly to mobile phones and digital billboards. Facebook have also got onboard by introducing push notifications which alert people depending on their geographical location.

UK:

The UK have developed a similar system to the Amber Alert called 'Child Rescue Alert' which uses the public to alert the police and help.