Turning “first” comments into awareness ads
To let people know the importance of early detection of lung cancer, we landed hundreds of first comments on popular social pages.
OTTAWA, ON JULY 28, 2025 – Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in Canada, primarily because most people are diagnosed at stage 3 or 4. But new research leading to massive breakthroughs is bringing hope to lung cancer patients and their families. Now, with early detection and proper treatment, some people can live happy and healthy lives for decades after their diagnosis. So it’s important for people to know the symptoms and catch it early.
To make people aware of the importance of early detection, we spread the word where people are always bragging about being early: social media comment sections. From quickly sneaking in a “First!” to the classic “It feels illegal to be this early…” people take great pride in being early on a popular social media post. So on all of the most popular social media pages, Canadian Lung Association was as early as you can get, turning hundreds of first comments into awareness ads for early detection of lung cancer.
Using tech to scrape post data from the most popular social pages we identified posting patterns to give us the most ideal windows to refresh and jump in the comments. With that, paired with a lot of patience and persistence, we were able to land over 200 first comments, beating over 670 million followers. Some notable first comments were made on pages like The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon (19M Followers), Food Network (32M), and ESPN (54M Followers). People took notice, engaged with our comments and brands even responded applauding our consistent punctuality.
And it's not just people who smoke who are at risk of lung cancer. While smoking is the #1 cause, there's been an increase connected to air pollution and radon. So, it’s important that everyone knows the symptoms of lung cancer. Visit our site to learn more about lung cancer.
The It Pays to Be Early campaign was sponsored by Merck Canada.
The campaign was conceived and executed by Wunder, an award-winning independent creative agency based in Halifax, NS.
Contact Stephen Flynn, Wunder's Creative Director, at stephen@wunder.ca.
