Looking to raise awareness about missing children, we sought to engage directly with consumers and invite them to use a platform they use every day in a whole new way. We disguised missing child reports as online reviews for popular destinations nearby. The reviews were collaborative and welcoming toward efforts from the community. By doing this, we changed the traditional business-to-consumer interaction of an online review into a community-oriented platform with the purpose of finding a locally missing child.

When a child goes missing in the United States, this information gets distributed but is mostly buried across government and nonprofit websites and police reports. If a case has enough leads, they issue an Amber Alert—an alarm blaring on our phones that’s often hushed by the majority before being properly acknowledged.

Back in the late 80s, Americans were confronted with daily reminders of missing children, their faces staring back from the backs of milk cartons. But as plastic jugs replaced traditional milk cartons, these poignant reminders vanished from our routine.

Today, with so much technology right at our fingertips, we have access to information in seconds, but the reality is, the rate of missing children continues to rise each year in the U.S. Unless you're actively searching, it's all too easy to remain unaware of this heartbreaking crisis unfolding in our own backyards.

Every 40 seconds, a child vanishes in the U.S.—that's a staggering 460,000 children every year. These missing children are very vulnerable and face unimaginable dangers, considering92% of human trafficking leads to sexual exploitation. Children don’t just go missing in random towns and dark alleys; it can happen in broad daylight in popular places that we all frequent in our communities.

Amigos for Kids, a dedicated nonprofit organization, has undertaken the critical mission of fighting to prevent child abuse and neglect. Through their efforts to empower families and educate communities, they strive to amplify an urgent call to action. The goal is to shed light on this pressing issue, raising awareness and inspiring the community to get involved in the search for and safe recovery of missing children.

Where do we go when we try to find something? Online. Specifically, Google Reviews and Yelp when trying to find information about places to visit. To raise awareness and help find missing children, we tapped into the power of the most common online review communities, transforming Google and Yelp reviews into lifelines for families in need.

The idea was simple: Integrate details about missing children into reviews for popular local businesses and destinations near where they were last seen. By seamlessly embedding these heartbreaking stories into the content people instinctively engage with, we created an innovative approach to prompt real community involvement.

This idea transformed everyday online interactions into a force for good, empowering the public to become active participants in the search for missing children. Rather than merely merely posting alerts, we tapped into the inherent trust and reach of user-generated reviews, ensuring these critical cases couldn't be ignored.

Our strategy was designed to seamlessly integrate critical information about missing children in digital spaces people turn to for information on a daily basis. To drive awareness and prompt real engagement and support, we knew we had to make sure this issue felt more personal for the community. Each review we crafted for a familiar local spot included the name and showed a real headshot of a child reported missing near that location, ensuring our efforts indeed hit closer to home.

By mirroring regular user reviews, we aimed to drive more conscious awareness of the very real cases happening within our local communities. Leveraging these popular online review platforms, we maximized exposure. We also shared recent information about local missing children while strategically supporting nearby establishments and recruiting new heroes who could be the next voice in finding a missing child.

To bring this idea to life, we developed a sophisticated, proprietary solution blending human expertise with digital and AI tools. First, eager volunteers meticulously collected data on recent missing children cases across the five highest-risk states: Florida, Texas, California, Ohio and New York.

Using a custom AI model, we then crafted over 1,000 custom reviews—each a glowing five-star ode to each carefully selected local destination, seamlessly merged with details about the specific missing child in the area and a CTA to visit the AmigosForKids website encouraging them to create their own review. But this was no simple task. To bypass platform filters, we had to contextualize the human element, Photoshopping missing children's faces into images from each location.

For a total of three weeks, we posted reviews crafted from AI-generated prompts, custom plug-ins, and human talent—hacking high-tech filters to ensure our content remained visible and impactful.

By harnessing the power of online reviews, we transformed everyday digital behavior into a lifeline for missing children and their families. Our innovative approach garnered an astounding 185 MM reach, 74.3 MM impressions, and $7.1 MM in earned media value, driving awareness and empowering the community to participate in the search actively.

Businesses were quick to rally behind our mission, leaving messages of support on many of the 1,000 reviews we strategically placed. These reviews generated a total of 13.4M impressions on Google and Yelp, with 96K clicks on the photos of the missing children.

Most importantly, our campaign played a role in reuniting 64 children with their families. By tapping into the universality of digital word-of-mouth, we brought it to light. We boosted support for missing children by embedding ourselves in normal day-to-day behavior, converting digital reviews into a force for good.