Gone Unseen?

Although Valassis’ ‘Have You Seen Me?’ ads are delivered to 60 million homes weekly, new-age technology has begun to make them irrelevant.

Since its founding in 1970, Valassis, a communications company located in Livonia, Michigan, has distributed circulars, papers with coupons and advertisements. Since 1985, Valassis has worked with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children – the NCMEC for short – so that, amongst the coupons and advertisements, there are announcements about missing children with information such as where they were last seen, their age, and how long they’ve been missing. 

This program dates back to 1985, around the time that missing kids on milk cartons were on the rise. An unnamed worker, at the time, suggested that Valassis run ads on missing kids after noticing there was a blank space by the receiver’s name and address on the circulars being distributed. Initially, the program was run exclusively in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was first employed to raise awareness about the disappearance of Cherrie Mahan, a young girl who’d gone missing on February 22nd, 1985. In the 36 years since the program’s inception, 164 children have been successfully recovered due directly to the program’s efforts. 

These recoveries may be in part because of the programs’ expansion as Kelly Green, Valassis’ Have You Seen Me? coordinator explains, “…it used to be when we first started this program we ran around 11 children, just 11 children all across the state, or, all across the United States, and then what actually took place, we dug a little more and because Valassis has really great targeting technology…we decided to look into the past, it was like a study of like five years and it was a granious [sic] amount of children, I wanna say around 5,000, something like that, um, and where they–where they were missing from and where they were recovered from and what we found was it was a very small radius of, um, you know, of, where–usually it was in the same state and a lot of times it was even in the same city. So running just 11 children all across the country didn’t make much sense, so we started what is this 50 and 50 program, that’s what we call it here internally, and it’s basically that it’s the same–it’s the Have You Seen Me program with a little bit better targeting capabilities.”

In each circular, approximately two to three kids run weekly. One or two run in the Free Standing Insert and one runs in the wrap, a big paper that encases all the rest of the ads. The wrap’s Have You Seen Me in particular is the biggest informational announcement, how often an announcement about a child occurs varies, as Mrs. Green explains, “sometimes if you feel like ‘wow, I’ve really seen this child a lot this month!’ that may be a decision on the NCMEC’s part. Sometimes they feel like this one single case or this one single child needs a lot of exposure so that’s when they’ll decide, ‘hey we’re just going to give you this one child to run all across the country for the next 5 weeks.’ Um, so the NCMEC is in charge of kind of deciding those factors.”

Mrs. Green further explains, “we know based on a zip code and based on even a postal–the sequence that the post–that the post office walks in, we can tell if you own a cat and a dog, would be better if you get, you know, those types of coupons or if you were a new mom or you moved in, it’d be better to get you know, house coupons, baby coupons, things like that. So, uh, we have really great technology, um, targeting capabilities” when disambiguating how their targeting capabilities worked.

In the Free Standing Insert, the FSI, the number of kids run varies. Some weeks it’ll be two and in others it’ll only be one. The FSI, however, has far less repetitions in the kids that are advertised weekly. This too is the NCMEC’s decision, Valassis has no say in what kids run when or where, unless a special circumstance allows it: the recovery of a child. In these instances, Mrs. Green chooses a different child who is set to run that month, replacing the child who’s already been recovered.

The necessity of these circulars and, by relation, the Have You Seen Me(s), is beginning to wane. In 2017, Nielsen, a global marketing research firm, reported that “Unsurprisingly, store websites and emails are the most-used digital channels, reaching 77% and 75% of households, respectively. Based on current trends, Nielsen predicts that more U.S. households will be using these touchpoints than traditional touchpoints by 2019.” According to a Valassis consumer study from 2020, out of 1,868 people 71% read the ads in the mail. 

For 1,868 people, 71% might seem like a large readership, but when taken into consideration that Valassis reaches over 50 million homes weekly, the statistic is both misleading and irrelevant. 

These methods of paper advertising were very effective and popular in the early 2000s, especially with circulars such as PennySaver and more advertised announcements, but as the generations change along with the world, so must the mediums in which people receive their news and information. PennySaver has gone virtual and so have many grocery stores such as Ralph’s and Gelson’s. Though their printed versions of weekly deals still get delivered and are available when walking into a store, many have them available online with a quick search to Google. Couponing apps such as  ibotta and Rakuten have also begun eliminating the need for paper coupons through the mail. 

Both of these are Valassis’ main distributed products, but because modern technology has begun to eliminate the need for paper, unfortunately many people have stopped paying attention to the circulars, and the papers are simply thrown away on arrival. Some people don’t even know what they are anymore. While Valassis ads and Have You Seen Me announcements might be reaching over 50 million households nationwide, it’s uncertain whether or not the papers are even being read, as even the consumer study results only show a small percentage of those receiving. 

AMBER alerts also pose a question as to whether or not paper announcements of missing children are necessary in this day and age. In 1984 the National Child Safety Council began the Missing Children Milk Carton program, which involved putting a missing child’s information on a milk carton, much like what Valassis announcements are doing nowadays. In 1996, when the AMBER Alert program was started, the practice of putting missing children information on milk cartons as well as through other newspapers was almost completely eradicated. 

Although the AMBER Alert program has stricter requirements in order for an alert to be sent out, cases that don’t meet the requirements are often given greater attention by law enforcement. In certain instances, that’s all that’s necessary;  the NCMEC has moved away from teaching ‘stranger danger’ and has begun to report that missing children categorized as ‘runaways’ or ‘endangered runaways’ have become the most frequent kinds of missing children, reporting “Out of all children missing from care, 94 percent were Endangered Runaways during each of the studied years.” The studied years in the 2017 report were from October 1, 2012 to September 30, 2016 with a total of 30,051 missing children’s cases analyzed. This information on runaways being the category with the highest number of missing children is also supported by the U.S Department of Justice. 

In cases of runaways, it’s possible that Valassis ads aren’t all that helpful. Mrs. Green explained that one of their most known recovered children, Sam Fastow, was recovered from his father, a non-custodial parent at the time. After seeing the announcements in the circulars, their neighbors took notice and reported it to their local authorities back in 1998. 

Along with AMBER Alerts, teenagers are also taking the lead on spreading information on missing children through social media with informational threads of their own. Once one person reposts the thread on their Instagram story many of their friends follow suit and people become more quickly aware. All these nuanced ways of spreading information about missing children begins to uncover that while perhaps at the height of paper advertising Valassis announcements may have been incredibly impactful, the same may no longer be true.