Together with her family, we legally changed Juliette's name to Nafi Thiam, a three-time Belgian Olympic champion and the most searched-for Belgian woman online. VML and Child Focus then launched a search campaign so anyone Googling "Nafi Thiam" or searching on YouTube saw Juliette's missing poster as the top ad – with each ad leading to a campaign site with a video explaining the initiative and a way to submit leads.
Finding Juliette
On International Missing Children’s Day, Child Focus launches a bold campaign to reignite the search for a Belgian woman
Client
- Child Focus
Office
- Antwerp
A year and a half after Juliette Goormans went missing, the search had faded. So we decided to change her name to one that Belgians search for every day.
Child Focus is the Belgian center for missing and sexually exploited children. In 2023, the organization opened 2,022 new cases for missing children, marking a staggering 32% increase compared to the previous year. While 95% of missing children are found quickly, many of whom are runaways who later return, others are located through the efforts of police, justice and tips from the Belgian population.
For children that remain long-missing, keeping their image alive is crucial for generating new leads from those who may have seen them.
Leading up to International Missing Children’s Day, the families of Liam Vanden Branden and Juliette Goormans officially applied to change their missing child’s name. Not to just any name, but to the most searched Belgians online: Thibaut Courtois and Nafi Thiam – each representing one half of Belgium’s two language regions. Then we launched a search campaign on Google and YouTube, targeting those names as keywords – so when people searched for "Thibaut Courtois" or "Nafi Thiam," they were surprised to see a missing child poster appear at the top of their results. The striking mix of a celebrity name with a familiar missing poster layout made people look twice. By hijacking search behavior, we cut through banner blindness and drove attention back to children who had been forgotten.
With over 2 million active searches, Juliette and Liam became the most searched Belgians in the world. That’s an increase of 104,900% in online searches with a media budget of barely €5,000. The campaign dominated media headlines, generating more than 36 million PR impressions and over €625,000 in earned media. Both Nafi Thiam and Thibaut Courtois shared the missing posters on their social media channels, resulting in more than 6 million organic views, amplifying awareness beyond the Belgian borders and leading to the result that truly mattered. Just three weeks into the campaign, we got a new lead. After investigating it, Juliette was found alive and well. Due to this success, Missing Children Europe is now looking to use the concept in other European countries.
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