FSA hunts agency to fight obesity

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is looking for an agency, through COI Communications, to create a campaign to promote better nutrition in the young.

The integrated campaign aims to show how a healthy diet can improve young people’s lifestyles. Agencies will be briefed to come up with a campaign to combat rising obesity figures among young people in the UK. Media strategies are expected to play a big part in the pitch, as teenagers are traditionally a difficult audience to reach.

The FSA is working with focus groups, and will start a &£500,000 pilot campaign in the first half of this year, with a full campaign expected later in the year.

The FSA has used BMP DDB for projects in the past year, and BMP is pitching for this business, but a spokeswoman for the FSA says the agency will not automatically get the new work.

This week the FSA launched a &£20m, five-year television campaign to promote food hygiene in restaurants. The campaign has been created by BMP DDB.

The FSA wants to cut the number of food poisoning cases in the UK by one-fifth by 2006. There are 4.5 million food poisoning cases in the UK every year.

In May, the FSA launched a &£5m campaign through BMP DDB to promote British food, following the foot-and-mouth crisis. BMP’s sister agency Claydon Heeley Jones Mason handled direct marketing on the campaign.