MISSED BIRTHDAYS
After humanising missing loved ones through The Unmissables, we felt that Australians were ready to see the other side; those left behind.
When someone you love is missing, their birthday is typically the hardest day of your year.
In order to promote better understanding and empathy, we wanted to give people an insight into how difficult marking the birthday of your loved one is when you don’t know where they are.
Families and friends of long term missing people experience a unique and complex form of grief, called Ambiguous Loss. Through the Missed Birthdays initiative, we introduced the term to the general public, so that individuals and professionals become aware and thus able to respond better to those experiencing it.
Over 2019-2020, we marked missing loved ones’ birthdays through TV commercials, billboards, radio and print advertising.