News & Events

Child Safety Goes Digital

The simplicity of setting up a safety plan was recently witnessed at the first digital M.I.L.K. event conducted at the KTUL (ABC – Tulsa, OK, News Channel 8) Baby Fair on March 24, 2001.  Imagery Concepts provided free software and snapped hundreds of digital photographs with Sony’s MVC-FD90 Mavica^® Camera.  Parents were handed a disk with their child’s photograph and instructed on procedures to create their Child Safety plan on their home computers. 

For photographs of the first M.I.L.K. event go to www.milk-eway.com/digital. 

Imagery Concepts, LLC, empowers parents by providing a reliable solution for the immediate retrieval of their child’s photograph and identification information. It is widely known that pictures are one of the most effective tools in recovering missing persons, and, with the growth of computer technology, the search for missing children has been revolutionized. In the event of an emergency, this vital data can be a quick click away.

Imagery Concepts, a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based company, is the developer of the Home Organizer^® software. The primary purpose of the software is the storage and retrieval of household documents such as tax records, photographs, and recipes. A recent collaboration of efforts has taken electronic retrieval to a new dimension. The Home Organizer electronic filing cabinet now includes the Child Safety drawer. This drawer gives the general public a method of storing photographs of and identification information about their children in the privacy of their own personal computer.  Should the need arise, parents can instantly print or send the identification information to local law enforcement and NCMEC. By joining efforts, Imagery Concepts and NCMEC complete the circle of communication between parents and law enforcement.

Every hour, every day, every week that a child is missing, the likelihood of their safe recovery decreases. Rapidly distributing a child’s picture can be the difference between a fast recovery and a prolonged search.  This joint effort is labeled M.I.L.K. – Managing Information on Lost Kids. 

The Child Safety drawer also contains summaries of the different brochures provided by NCMEC.  Brochures cover issues such as choosing a babysitter, what to do should your child runaway, and how a child can be safer on the Internet. A direct Internet link is available to the complete online brochure library developed by NCMEC. The drawer includes a link to the CyberTipline to help individuals report the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet.

Parents can easily establish their family’s Child Safety plan with the Home Organizer software.  Photographs can be imported from a digital camera,  scanner, or roll of film that has been converted to disk. 

With the help of these technologies and innovative uses of many others, NCMEC has witnessed a remarkable increase in its recovery rate from 66 percent in 1989 to 93 percent today. 

Copyright © 2009 National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. All rights reserved.

Well, Saturday was a great success both for the Farmers name, the exposure and recognition at the Fluvanna County “Old Farm Day”. We had a great location and it looks like we gave out some 266 fingerprint kits, 165 or so Farmers bags with info about our products and services and 78 Digital Home Organizer CD’s between 10:00 am and 4:00 pm. And best of all, I collected

122 filled out contact cards and 47 of those asked to be contacted about quoting their insurance coverage. So I will busy for the next week or so making contact with all these wonderful potential clients. We also gave away (3) $30.00 gift cards to “Toys R Us” to names drawn from the bucket of contact cards. All in all, a GREAT day!!!!!

Regards,

Randy M. Olson

Randy – WOW – 122 prospect contact cards with 47 wanting a quote. I am

SO proud of you and the way you not only represented Farmers over the weekend, but also helped out the families in greater Charlottesville to protect their children. The 266 fingerprint kits you gave to the parents, and 78 home organizer CDs will help you make your mark as a Reserve agent in D24. Well done.

Virginia agents: Please read  about Randy’s weekend. He’s gonna write lots of business out of this community event.

Riko C. Metzroth

Virginia State Executive

I wanted to share what being a CLM Farmers agent does for your agency!

I was voted “Best of South County” in the Insurance category by the readers of the Star-News, the local South County paper

This is a direct result of the MILK, EARS, Fire Dept, and local school and March of Dimes fund raising & other events I have either hosted or participated in!

I could have never gotten this type of award without that type of exposure and the opportunity Farmers has given me to give back to my community!

Trust me, CLM works!

Susanne Romo

We got 35 contact cards the first Saturday and 30 the next.  As far as policies written from this, we are still working with quite a few but so far we have about 15 policies written with about ten pending.  Also, I have averaged one company request for a milk event the last three events I have done.  I will get more info as it comes.

We had a m.i.l.k. booth and had Firefacts CD’s to give to the kids, and it

was a success! Ray “The Milk Man” Vergara was going out in the crowd and

walking kids over for pictures. The parents were very appreciative, and

were very excited about the product. The give a-ways helped also! We

raffled off a signed Lisa Leslie jersey.

Also, everyone got a free Lisa Leslie Height poster! Good Stuff!

Just got the tally that we gathered 180 leads from the Sparks Game tonight.

Although I was not there, the event was great. J-Brown represented us well.

All the agents left pumped. They just wish they could do it again!!

We had another fantastically successful MILK event this Sunday, thanks to the help of Farmers agents from four different Districts working together (District 65, 56, 83 and 44) to show our communities we care.

We even had agents from Orange County come down to San Diego to help and learn!

Bottom line: 180 leads, 41 of which checked off some sort of interest in insurance That’s a 23% interest ‘rate’, which when you consider we never ask them to check off an interest in insurance, really says a lot about the positive way we are viewed in the community and the need that exists out there.
In the pictures you can see how eager parents are to get their children ID’d, and the sense of the lines that form at these events.

At this event, my 3rd time at Lemon Festival, several clients stopped by to say hello, local businesses approached us to do MILK events with them, and our networking partners who were helping us got business.  Every time we do a MILK event in the same community, we get better known and respected.  Bottom line…MILK works.

“8^th Annual “Pet-A-Palooza” at The Palace of Auburn Hills Deemed a Success

In an attempt to find good homes for hundreds of homeless kittens, cats, puppies, dogs, rabbits and ferrets.  Metro Networks and Pet Supplies “Plus” sponsored “Pet-A-Palooza” at The Palace of Auburn Hills.  The event took place on Saturday, August 1 and Sunday, August 2, 2009.  The event included family and pet-oriented activities and attendees were encouraged to bring their pets to the event.” – opening paragraph from 2009 Pet-A-Palooza event, michpetapalooza.com website

The 29 participating adoption groups had 600 rescued animals on site and the event organizers were pleased to report that 402 animals found new homes.  Farmers was one of the 10 event partners/sponsors and ran a joint E.A.R.S. and m.i.l.k. tent.  Eleven (11) agents from 4 districts were involved in the event.  The participating agents ranged from Reserve Agent to 36-year Farmers veterans.  For over half of the agents this was their first time participating in an E.A.R.S. and/or m.i.l.k. event.  All of them loved meeting and working with agents from other districts on such an important project.

As we had many agents and multiple districts involved we developed a Participating Agent flyer which listed the basic contact information of all participating agent and their DMs (attached).  The Participating Agent flyers were very valuable to have as many new owners wanted their new adoption digitally IDed but a lot of the poor animals were still quite “shell shocked” from their pre-rescue ordeals.  Even as the new owners were walking them out, some of the dogs just coward to the ground, tails tucked, ears down, looking around trying to see where the next “hit” would come from or just in total confusion.  Most of the people who took the Participating Agent flyers said once they acclimated their animal to their families they would contact an agent for digital ID.  Several of the adoption groups also took the flyer.  A total of eighty-seven (87) flyers were distributed so there will be residual contacts.

Below are the final results from the Pet-A-Palooza event (vary slightly from preliminary as husband/wife, grandparent/parent completed duplicate contact cards):

4,500+ people attended

600 rescued animals on site

402 animals adopted

105 animals digitally IDed (104 dogs, 1 cat)

62 children digitally IDed

142 Home Organizer 3.0 software discs handed out to event attendees, rescue groups and sponsors

123 contact cards for 118 households

34 households requesting proposal for 108 insurance products

- 17 fire                                                       -    1 umbrella

- 16 auto                                                     -    1 specialty

- 9 life                                                          -    1 coverage review

- 6 FFS                                                        -    1 pet insurance

- 2 commercial

The agents received 3 invitations to future events and contact information from 20 organization interested in hosting future events.   We were also approached by LEEP (Law Enforcement Education Program) regarding the possibility of partnering, corporate wide, their Project Safekids Program with Farmers m.i.l.k. program and their S.O.S. (Students on Sobriety) Program with Farmers Wrecked educational program.

This event was a major collaborative effort between agents (listed on Participating Agent List), district managers (listed on Participating Agent List), State Office personnel (Cristyn Castelli PLGC), Imagery Concepts (Tom Quinn-CEO, Kim Dunlap-Executive Assistant), Metro Networks/Westwood One (Marie Skladd, National Account Manager), The Palace of Auburn Hills (Kristine Bergandino, Sales & Marketing Coordinator) and Joe Sowerby (Haines & Friends – Pet-A-Palooza founder).  It took 2 ½ months of collaboration to set up and coordinate the event and participants.  Joe Sowerby is very interested in Farmers having an E.A.R.S./m.i.l.k. tent at Haines & Friends Arizona Pet-A-Palooza in October (information forwarded to SEO Dan Schrock).

The agents took turns walking the vendor tents and events with E.A.R.S. and m.i.l.k. flyers – educating people about digital ID and directing them to our tent – and taking photographs of animals and children.  DM staff burned CDs and collected contact cards.  DM’s made equipment/supply runs and watched agent’s children so they could work the event.

I have received numerous requests for details regarding this event.  One of the questions posed to me was “Why did they (the agents) do it?”  The first-time event agents participated for two primary reasons:  leads or curiosity.  However, by the time each agent left, the original reasons for coming were mute.  The animals they saw in the rescue tents, the histories they heard about the some of the animals, hearing the event worker’s story of his 6-yr old niece being abducted by a former babysitter a week earlier and the helplessness the family had felt, the Guardians for Animals rescue group (one of the major animal rescue groups for Hurricanes Kitrina and Rita) talking about all of the animals that had been euthanized in the aftermath of the Hurricanes because they couldn’t locate the owners or adopt them out.  At the end of the day obtaining leads was just a perk.  Every first-time event agent said they will be participating in many more events and for the same reason prior-event agents participated in this one –

for the animals and for the children.