Investigative Police of Chile Turns Missing-Person Posters Into Snapchat 3D Portraits
"Finding Hope" is a April 2018 digital public-interest campaign created by agency Raya for the Investigative Police of Chile, which converted physical missing-person posters into Snapchat Snapcodes that, when scanned, displayed interactive 3D models of missing individuals alongside identifying details including height, body type, tattoos, and clothing, according to Obtienearchivo Bcn Cl.
The campaign launches at a moment of acute social urgency in Chile, according to Adlatina. According to Clapboard's editorial record, the Investigative Police of Chile — known by its Spanish-language acronym PDI — commissioned Raya to address a structural gap in how missing-person information reached younger segments of the Chilean public. Traditional print posters and static database entries were failing to engage an audience increasingly oriented toward mobile-first, visual platforms. The solution was technological and spatial simultaneously: existing physical posters became entry points into an augmented experience, bridging analogue infrastructure with digital reach without requiring new distribution of materials.
The mechanics were direct. A person passing a missing-person poster in Chile could point a smartphone camera at the embedded Snapcode. Snapchat would then render a three-dimensional representation of the missing individual, surfacing the PDI's case data in a format legible to younger users. As reported by Meganoticias, the official public launch event took place on 17 April 2018, convened by PDI, its Briup missing-persons unit, Raya, and Snapchat. The campaign contained a single media asset, disciplined in its focus, allowing the underlying technology and the human stories it carried to do the persuasive work. In the United States and across global advertising markets, cause-led campaigns incorporating augmented reality were still a relative novelty in 2018, making this Chilean execution a genuinely early adoption of the format in a public-interest context, according to LinkedIn.
The Investigative Police of Chile recorded 8,726 missing-person cases in 2017, according to Meganoticias. That figure frames the strategic problem Raya was asked to solve: a large and persistent caseload, a national database that existed but was not reaching the people most likely to recognise a missing individual on the street, and a communication channel — the physical missing-person poster — that had not meaningfully evolved in decades.
Raya's strategic insight was generational. Younger people in Chile carried smartphones and used Snapchat daily, yet the PDI's outreach tools were calibrated to older media habits. By embedding Snapcodes into posters that already had legal and institutional standing in public space, the campaign required no new placement budget and no new permission structure. The existing infrastructure of missing-person communication became the media channel. This approach places "Finding Hope" in a lineage of campaigns that treat civic infrastructure as creative raw material rather than a constraint, a posture that separates it from more conventional public service advertising.
Chile's broader advertising market in 2018 was under pressure. According to observacom.org, excluding online advertising, Chilean advertising investment declined in real terms during 2018, with open television advertising falling and newspaper and magazine categories contracting significantly. In that climate, a digital-first public-interest campaign that required no paid media placement to function represented a structurally efficient model. Competitors in the public-service communication space, including conventional government awareness campaigns distributed through broadcast television and the Red Cross Chile's print-led missing-persons communications, were operating within declining-reach channels. Raya oriented PDI's message toward the platform where younger Chilean audiences were spending time, rather than the platforms where institutional advertising had historically been concentrated.
"Finding Hope" rests on a single, precisely executed creative idea. The campaign's central device — the Snapchat Snapcode embedded within an existing missing-person poster — transforms a passive piece of civic communication into an interactive encounter. The 3D models generated through the Snapcode displayed a richness of identifying detail that flat photography cannot convey: height, body type, tattoos, clothing, and other physical characteristics, as reported by Meganoticias. This was not augmented reality deployed for spectacle but augmented reality deployed for recognition, with the express functional purpose of helping a member of the Chilean public identify a real missing person.
The production demands of the campaign were considerable. Each missing-person case required a three-dimensional model built from case-file data, a process that merges forensic information with digital artistry. The resulting models carry the weight of documentary precision rather than creative idealisation. Production credits for the "Finding Hope" campaign's 3D modelling and technical execution are not fully publicly documented across available sources, though the campaign was developed under the creative direction of agency Raya in partnership with PDI's Briup missing-persons unit and Snapchat's platform capabilities, as reported by Meganoticias.
The decision to confine the campaign to a single media asset reflects a creative confidence that is itself notable. Many public-interest campaigns in Chile and across Latin America scatter their message across multiple executions in an effort to maximise reach. "Finding Hope" inverts that logic. One execution, one mechanism, one moment of encounter between a bystander and a face they might recognise. The formal restraint amplifies rather than limits impact, placing the missing person — not the technology — at the centre of every interaction the campaign produces.
"Finding Hope" won a Bronze award at Achap 2018 in the Direct category, according to Clapboard's editorial record. Achap — the Chilean Association of Advertising Agencies — represents the primary industry recognition body for advertising craft in Chile, making this award an externally verifiable marker of peer-assessed effectiveness within the Chilean market. The Direct category win is appropriate: the campaign's core mechanism is a one-to-one prompt to action, not a broadcast impression.
No independently verified performance data quantifying Snapcode scans, database traffic increases, or case resolutions for "Finding Hope" is publicly available. What the structural evidence does support is a campaign designed for measurability. Every Snapcode scan is a traceable event; every engagement with a 3D model represents a discrete interaction with a specific missing-person case. The architecture of the campaign was built for direct response even when aggregate results have not entered the public record.
"Finding Hope" holds a Clapboard Score of 52 out of 100, reflecting a campaign that demonstrates genuine creative and technological ambition within the constraints of a single-asset execution for a public-service advertiser. The score acknowledges the innovation of the Snapchat integration and the functional seriousness of the subject matter while noting that limited documented reach data and a contained media footprint temper its overall assessed impact. In the context of Chile's public-interest advertising landscape in 2018 — a year when conventional media channels were contracting, according to observacom.org — a score of 52 represents a campaign that pointed in a structurally correct direction without generating the documented scale that would push its assessment higher.
"Finding Hope" is a 2018 digital public-interest campaign created by Raya for the Investigative Police of Chile. It converted physical missing-person posters into Snapchat Snapcodes that, when scanned, displayed interactive 3D models of missing individuals, targeting younger audiences in Chile with PDI's missing-person database.
Scanning a poster's Snapcode with a smartphone launched a 3D model of the missing person via Snapchat. Each model displayed identifying details including height, body type, tattoos, and clothing, as reported by Meganoticias. The technology gave younger Chilean users direct access to PDI case data through a platform they already used daily.
Raya identified that younger people in Chile used Snapchat regularly but were not engaging with traditional missing-person posters or PDI's database. Embedding Snapcodes into existing posters required no new media placement, converting established civic infrastructure into a digital-access point without additional distribution cost.
Chile recorded 8,726 missing-person cases in 2017, according to Meganoticias. This figure provided the strategic backdrop for the April 2018 campaign, demonstrating the scale of the problem that the Investigative Police of Chile and Raya sought to address by expanding public awareness through Snapchat technology.
"Finding Hope" won a Bronze award at the Achap 2018 awards in the Direct category, according to Clapboard's editorial record. Achap is the Chilean Association of Advertising Agencies and represents the primary peer-recognition body for advertising craft in Chile, making the award an externally verifiable measure of industry-assessed effectiveness.
"Finding Hope" holds a Clapboard Score of 52 out of 100. The score recognises the campaign's genuine creative and technological innovation — particularly its Snapchat 3D model integration — while reflecting the limited documented reach data and single-asset media footprint that constrain its overall assessed impact within Chile's 2018 public-interest advertising landscape.
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