Photo and Flier Distribution: After the First 48 Hours

After the first 48 hours, draw on your imagination and the ideas of your many contacts to keep your child's picture and story alive before the public. Here are some ideas of what can be done.

Be creative and aggressive in getting your child's posters put up in heavily trafficked areas across the country. Get approval for your mail carrier to place fliers in mailboxes. Ask utility companies to distribute fliers as their meter readers make their routes. Ask churches to request that their members include your child's flier in Christmas cards and other letters. Ask banks and other groups that make regular mailings to include copies of your child's flier. Ask Federal Express, United Parcel Service, local pizza companies, and other delivery companies to distribute fliers on their routes. Ask trucking lines or moving companies to post pictures on the backs of their trucks. Ask airline pilot and flight attendant unions to request that members post fliers in cities where airline personnel lay over. Call motorcycle clubs and other groups that hold national meetings to see if their members will take along fliers for distribution. If anyone helping you has difficulty convincing a company to post or distribute your child's picture, you personally should get on the phone, because it is harder to say no to a victim parent. The checklist Distributing Fliers contains further tips for flier production and distribution.

Prepare a press kit for distribution to national news and talk shows and magazines. Ask local public relations firms or persons with writing ability to help you prepare the kit and to secure e-mail and street addresses. Be sure to include local and regional radio stations. Your law enforcement agency can also give you guidance on press kit preparation.

Look for events where volunteers can distribute fliers. Have volunteer’s research and make a list of events such as sports contests, county fairs, festivals, and concerts planned in your community, State, and region. Distribute fliers to those events as part of your overall canvassing plan.

Send press releases and arrange interviews during special or seasonal events. Consider celebrating your missing child's birthday by reading aloud cards or special messages you hope he or she will hear. Speak at what would have been your child's graduation from elementary or middle school. Distribute age-progressed photos of your child and updated case information to refresh people's memories and renew interest in your child's plight. Enlist the aid of celebrities and politicians who can help publicize your child's case.

Continue to work with NCMEC and its photo distribution program. More than 400 private-sector participants use NCMEC's print photographs, and a number of Federal agencies place NCMEC photos in their mail as well. ADVO, a direct-mail company, disseminates NCMEC's photographs of missing children to more than 70 million homes each week, with pictures of 52 different children issued each year. About one in seven children who have been featured in the ADVO photo distribution program have been recovered. Wal-Mart works with NCMEC to distribute fliers to its 2,800 individual stores on a monthly basis. In addition, the U.S. Postal Service has a photo distribution program in place that sends fliers by fax to post offices nationwide for display and for dissemination by mail carriers.
Make your own picture cards to insert in mass mailings. Get permission from government agencies, utility companies, and private businesses to have your card inserted in newspapers and envelopes containing State license renewals, tax assessments, local utility bills, payroll envelopes, and bank statements. Talk to direct-mail advertising companies to gain access to mass coupon mailings.

Ask national groups for help. Ask law enforcement associations, women's auxiliary groups, civic groups such as the Rotary Club or Elks and Moose lodges, the Chamber of Commerce, military groups or associations such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and college fraternities to distribute and post your child's poster or flier.

Ask a variety of franchise businesses to distribute posters through their normal supply lines. Consider especially various fast food and gasoline chains. Individuals who know who has abducted or who is holding your child may frequent liquor stores and adult bookstores more often than banks, post offices, and schools. Reward posters should be posted where people with information are most likely to see them.

Consider using publicity gimmicks to etch your child's face in the public's memory. Have your child's picture printed on buttons, T-shirts, bumper stickers, stamps, and baseball-type cards.

Appear on talk shows on the condition that your child's picture is shown during the program. Be sure that the subject of the talk show is compatible with the seriousness of your child's situation and that the show’s topic and other guests can be verified prior to your appearance. Make sure that the storyline will help, not harm, you and your child. Steer clear of sensational shows that focus on serial child murders, child sexual exploitation, or other issues that can take the focus away from your case.

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