Coins of Hope

Brief:
In Europe, every two minutes a child is reported missing. Some of them are found quickly, others remain missing for years. Eventually we forget their faces. They no longer get the attention they still deserve. Child Focus, the Belgian Center for Missing Children, never gives up hope. They do everything it takes to help the families in their search. They wanted to get the media, the Belgians (and if possible even the whole European population) thinking and talking about missing children again.

Solution & Cultural Context:
We created Coins of Hope: 1 million 2 euro coins show the face of a missing child, and also the website with information on all missing children. For producing and bringing the coins into circulation, we needed the agreement of all 19 European governments of the Eurozone. The supporting campaign asked people to spread hope, by spending the coins. Coins of Hope are a permanent medium with infinite impressions across the Eurozone, spreading hope from hand to hand.

Navigational Instructions:
The supporting campaign asked people to spread hope, simply by spending the coins. But not without first sharing a picture of it with #CoinsofHope. Or doing a ‘coin swap’: on coinsofhope.eu people could upload a picture of any other coin and turn it into a Coin of Hope. The interactive map shows the the locations where pictures have been shared. The website also shows information on all missing children in Europe, the missing children shown are location based to the country you are surfing from.

Results:
As the Coins of Hope continue to be spread from hand to hand, we created a permanent medium with infinite impressions across the Eurozone. Thanks to the renewed media attention for missing children, one journalist even managed to locate one of the children in our campaign: Safi Mansour, who had been missing for almost a year.
• € 22 million earned media 

• +70 million social reach 

• 180 million media impressions


Insights:
On International Missing Children’s Day (05/25/2016) we brought the coins into circulation and launched the supporting campaign in Belgium: radio and TV commercials, print ads, ATM screens, screens in supermarkets, posters, window stickers, cash mats and an online campaign. We sent a direct mails to politicians, athletes and celebrities, asking them to share a picture of the coin, making Liam’s face as famous as theirs. Even today, Coins of Hope continue to be spread across Europe and the world.