The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is due to offer $900 million to a major marketing agency to manage their controversial “The Real Cost” campaign for the next five years.

PRovoke, a trade publication for the public relations industry, reports that the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products is reviewing proposals from major marketing firms to further support public education initiatives targeting teens at risk of getting addicted to vapes.

The account could pay up to $900 million over five years. That’s a whopping amount.

In 2017, the Center for Tobacco Products hired Interpublic Group and their company’s many divisions to manage the “Real Cost” campaign in a support contract that was worth $625 million. “Real Cost” was launched in 2014 and has reached 10.7 million teens who have used e-cigarettes and other tobacco products.

“Evidence from controlled field experiments and population studies shows that paid media campaigns are a proven strategy to prevent and reduce population-level tobacco use and have contributed to significant declines in tobacco use over the past several decades. However, the paid media campaigns of today must navigate a fragmented, competitive media environment to find and motivate hard-to-reach audiences who aren’t particularly interested in the topic of tobacco,” the RFP said, via the media coverage.

This is a developing story.

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