Finding Pete and Nikki: Defining the Target Audience for "The Real Cost" Campaign.

Successfully reaching at-risk teens aged 12-17 years with smoking-prevention messages capable of changing their knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about cigarette smoking requires a multifaceted approach to understand the target audience's unique demographic, environmental, behavioral, interpersonal, and intrapersonal characteristics. This paper explores the initial target audience segmentation and insights development approach used to create the underlying message strategy for "The Real Cost" youth smoking prevention media campaign-a public education effort responsible for preventing nearly 350,000 U.S. youth aged 11-18 years from initiating smoking from 2014 to 2016. SUPPLEMENT INFORMATION: This article is part of a supplement entitled Fifth Anniversary Retrospective of "The Real Cost," the Food and Drug Administration's Historic Youth Smoking Prevention Media Campaign, which is sponsored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

"The Real Cost": Reaching At-Risk Youth in a Fragmented Media Environment.

In 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration launched its first youth smoking prevention media campaign, "The Real Cost," with the goal of preventing cigarette smoking among at-risk youth aged 12-17 years in the U.S. This paper examines how the paid media strategy was developed, implemented, and refined between 2013 and 2016. Specifically, this paper discusses how research and best practices informed the media targeting strategy used to implement a multifaceted national campaign that successfully reached and influenced thousands of teens at risk for cigarette smoking. SUPPLEMENT INFORMATION: This article is part of a supplement entitled Fifth Anniversary Retrospective of "The Real Cost," the Food and Drug Administration's Historic Youth Smoking Prevention Media Campaign, which is sponsored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Bringing "The Real Cost" to Life Through Breakthrough, Evidence-Based Advertising.

Building on the success "The Real Cost" campaign has already achieved requires the constant development of new audience insights, novel ideas, and unconventional ways of bringing the campaign to life. This article provides a high-level overview of the campaign's approach to developing and testing breakthrough advertising that has proven effective in preventing smoking initiation among a skeptical, hard-to-reach, at-risk youth audience. This approach is informed by evidence-based communication best practices for youth behavior change campaigns; insights from published literature and subject matter experts with decades of experience in youth health marketing and tobacco prevention; and findings from formative research studies conducted as part of the campaign development process. The paper also explores two campaign advertisements to showcase the research-based creative development process in action. This article is a collaboration between federal government officials, campaign managers, ad agency creatives, and researchers, and thus provides a unique, multidisciplinary examination into the research and creative processes that go into creating a national health communication effort. SUPPLEMENT INFORMATION: This article is part of a supplement entitled Fifth Anniversary Retrospective of "The Real Cost," the Food and Drug Administration's Historic Youth Smoking Prevention Media Campaign, which is sponsored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.