Royal Mail urges sector to join Child Rescue Alerts

Royal Mail MarketReach is joining forces with the charity Missing People to ask the marketing community to sign up to receive Child Rescue Alerts and potentially help to find a missing youngster.
Royal Mail has supported Missing People for the past two years and is funding the Child Rescue Alert service for the next 12 months.
The business division is now targeting agencies and brand owners with a direct and email campaign promoting the scheme.
MarketReach is covering all costs for the campaign, while Havas Helia is donating its creative time.
A Child Rescue Alert is activated when a missing child’s life is believed to be in immediate danger and notifies members of the public with a geographically-targeted text, email or app notification. Royal Mail’s 123,000 postmen and women already receive the alerts on the PDAs they carry on their rounds.
The funding from Royal Mail will ensure the operation of the 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year system, continues for another year. In 2015, Royal Mail also launched a ‘Freepost Missing People’ address to help those who are missing make contact with loved ones.
Missing People is the UK’s only charity dedicated to bringing the 250,000 children and adults that go missing every year back together with their families.
The direct mail and email activity supports the new campaign from Missing People – You don’t have to be a superhero to save a child’s life – which launched on February 15 with a TV ad narrated by Stephen Fry.
MarketReach chief executive Jonathan Harman said: “Royal Mail is proud to support the charity Missing People. We’ve been using our unique position in British communities to support this campaign since 2014 and now, at MarketReach, we are hoping to use our relationship with British business to further spread the reach of this important initiative.
“I hope that marketers will sign up to receive the Child Text Alert and perhaps someone in our industry could play a personal role in reuniting a family with their loved one.”