Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in Europe and getting younger. Among Europeans in their 20s, colorectal cancer (CRC) incidence has risen at nearly 8% per year or roughly 80% per decade per 2004 to 2016 data (Vuik et al., Gut, 2019). Alarmingly, this trajectory is predicted to worsen in the years ahead (Sifaki-Pistolla et al., Cancers, 2022). Yet younger Europeans widely believe CRC is a disease of the elderly. That misconception, compounded by health misinformation and content fatigue, has created a serious public health gap: the people most at risk are not receiving trusted, relevant health information.
For European Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month (ECCAM) 2025, Digestive Cancers Europe (DiCE) needed to close that gap. The challenge was not simply one of reach, but of relevance and trust: how do you deliver clinically accurate health information to an audience that has learned to scroll past it?
Three public health objectives were set for ECCAM 2025:
Raise awareness of CRC risk at any age, directly challenging the diagnosis age misconception. Targets: 100K social media impressions, 20K engagements with patient content, 3–5 ambassadors engaged.
Build sustained engagement with CRC health information among younger European audiences. Targets: 4% ER across all content, Follower growth: 3–5% Instagram (vs. 1.1% industry average), 2% LinkedIn (vs. 0.94% industry average).
Activate DiCE's affiliates to extend local reach. Target: 50%+ uptake of campaign materials with 13+ of 26 affiliates. This was a key target for DiCE.
We approached ECCAM 2025 as a public health intervention, not a conventional awareness campaign. The core insight: health information fails when it asks too much of the audience. Younger Europeans had already tuned out institutional health messaging, particularly on a topic as stigmatised as colorectal cancer. Meeting them on their own terms meant going where they already were, in the format they were receptive to, without asking them to click away.
The result was #🍑IYKYK, a social-first, patient-powered campaign that used cultural fluency to carry clinical truth into spaces it had not previously reached.
Built on a social trend, engineered as a public health tool
We built the campaign around #IYKYK (If You Know, You Know), adding the 🍑 emoji as a bold, language-agnostic signal. Before launch, we validated resonance across European markets using Decipher, GCI Health's proprietary predictive AI platform, which analysed multilingual public social content, blogs and forums across more than 20 European markets. The data confirmed that #IYKYK was already in organic use across Europe regardless of native language. In the campaign, all health information was embedded within the social post itself, with no click-through required, removing the primary barrier to public health communication online: audience drop-off at the point of redirect.
Clinical accuracy was maintained through DiCE's oversight and review of all patient content prior to publication.
Patient voices as the delivery mechanism
Four patient ambassadors in their 20s and 30s were selected to challenge directly the assumption that CRC only affects older people. Each shared their story in their own voice, weaving CRC facts into personal narrative. Against a total campaign investment of approximately €40,000, lean for a pan-European public health effort, paid spend was reserved exclusively for patient stories, with each ambassador receiving seven days of boosted reach at €1,000 and equal visibility across the campaign. Posts were boosted from DiCE's owned channels rather than as dark ads, so engagement accumulated publicly on the feed and continued building credibility well beyond the campaign period.
A pan-European public health network
Campaign materials and template social assets were distributed in advance to all 26 DiCE member organisations with localisation guidance. Sixteen affiliates translated and adapted content for local audiences, creating coordinated, cross-continental distribution of the public health message.
Campaign execution: February–March 2025
The teaser phase ran from mid-February 2025, deploying #🍑IYKYK across DiCE, affiliate and ambassador channels with no explanation, generating strong organic engagement ahead of launch. The campaign launched formally at DiCE's ECCAM webinar on 27 February 2025, with a video featuring DiCE leaders and all four ambassadors. The social takeover ran throughout March 2025, with a new patient story published each week. A close-out post in late March consolidated results and reinforced the call to action.
One in-campaign optimisation materially increased reach: after the first patient story saw a significant uplift when shared to Facebook Stories, this approach was applied to all subsequent posts.
Every objective was exceeded. ECCAM 2025 reached 54x more people than in 2024 (46,000 impressions) and 33x the prior high of 74,500 set in 2023.
Reach
2.5M+ total cross-platform reach: Facebook 2.01M views; Instagram 199K; LinkedIn 11.6K; plus Meta Stories content (not tracked separately in platform analytics). Four patient ambassadors engaged (target: 3–5). Launch video: 1,500+ organic views, with LinkedIn paid amplification generating 39K impressions and 48K+ views among HCP and policymaker audiences.
Engagement
60K+ total campaign engagements. Patient story content drove 41K engagements (target: 20K, more than doubled). Average engagement rate: 6.8% (target: 4%); 9% on Instagram, four times the 2.2% industry average. A close-out LinkedIn carousel also featuring patient ambassors, served organically to a tight professional audience, generated a 51.24% engagement rate (engagements/impressions; n=1,095), consistent with DiCE's highly engaged HCP follower base.
Mila's story generated 17,950 engagements, nearly 30% of all campaign engagement from a single post, validating the insight that human experience carries health information further than statistics alone.
Audience growth
Starting from a pre-campaign Instagram base of 372 followers, DiCE achieved +18.5% growth (target: 3–5%; industry average: 1.1%). LinkedIn: +10.7% (target: 2%; industry average: 0.94%). Facebook: +8.2%.
Affiliate activation
16 of 26 affiliates (62%) translated and localised campaign content (target: 50%). All ambassadors confirmed willingness to return for ECCAM 2026; one affiliate wrote to thank DiCE for the campaign toolkit. This was a key KPI for DiCE.
All of the above was achieved on a total investment of approximately €40,000, roughly €0.016 per person reached.
