Posters of missing kids can be fixed to walls or lamp-posts, but sooner or later they fade or fall. This year, to mark International Missing Children’s Day, Korean agency Cheil and the national police had a better idea: Hope Tape. Cheil created a new packing tape that incorporated the photos and details of children who had been missing for a long time – as well as a QR code leading to a computer-generated image of what they might look like today. The code also connected to a mobile app where users could report potential sightings.
Thanks to a partnership with the Korean postal service and Hanjin Transportation, the tape was used on thousands of parcels that found their way into people’s homes, getting the pictures of missing kids in front of Korean citizens in a way they couldn’t ignore. Most missing children in Korea are found, but for the 600-plus who’ve been missing for up to five years, there’s now a new hope.