70% of success in search for missing children depends on finding witnesses, according to the Russian Missing Children Organization.
In 2016, Uber and Proximity (BBDO Russia Group) launched UberSEARCH — an experimental way to search for missing children in a big city by placing portraits of them on cars.
Uber teamed up with Proximity (BBDO Russia Group) to use car art to attract the attention of potential witnesses and help find children. The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Missing Children Organization provided cases of three missing children. Their portraits were then placed on Uber cars, whose owners volunteered to help to find the children.
Uber also sent out notifications through its app with the information about the UberSEARCH campaign.
In less than two hours after the launch the faces of the missing children appeared on popular Russian websites, were featured on federal TV channels and kicked off conversations and posts across social media platforms. The campaign helped the police locate the whereabouts of Yana, one of the three missing children UberSEARCH was looking for.
Yana was then found and is now safe.
“Our idea was very unusual, but it worked! We also received an inquiry from another transportation service to join the project on a volunteer basis,” said Dmitry Vtorov, Head of the Missing Children Organization.
“In Russia, photos of missing children are often displayed in very poor quality, and traditional posters have a very limited reach. We asked artists to draw eye-catching artworks based on the photos given by the police, and instead of using airbrush and painting the cars, we used printed car stickers to place these artworks on Uber cars. Thus we decreased the time and money spent on production while ensuring the eye-catchiness of the artwork,” added a spokesperson from Proximity.
