From peak to plunge: Moderna's Buzz score drops 40 points since 2021 high
Moderna recently announced that sales of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine have plummeted 94% year over year. While the company expects a booster shot and other newer products to revive growth, we look at how the brand’s health has fared since the beginning of the pandemic.
YouGov started tracking the pharmaceutical company at the end of May 2020. Since then, Moderna’s Index score (a metric that conveys overall brand health using the average of Impression, Value, Quality, Reputation, Satisfaction, and Recommend scores) which was at 1.9 on June 1, 2020, increased to 22.5 on June 15, 2021. But over the course of the last two years the company’s brand health slipped to 10.3 percentage points as of July 31, 2023.
Digging further into media metrics reveals that while the brand’s Awareness score has stayed consistent since its increase in 2021, the Buzz score, which monitors whether consumers have heard anything positive or negative about a brand, has plummeted. Moderna’s Buzz score soared, improving from 7 as on November 12, 2020, and peaking at 38.5 on March 9, 2021, around the time there were reports that the vaccine effectively prevented coronavirus infections. But, as of July 31, 2023, these scores have dropped to -1.2.
Even Reputation scores, which measure whether people would be proud or embarrassed to work for a particular brand, have been on a downward trajectory. However, the latest score as of July 2023 (7.3), is still more than what it was in June 2020 (3.6).
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Methodology: YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. A brand’s Buzz score is based on the question: “Over the past two weeks, which of the following drug brands have you heard something positive or negative about (whether in person, online, or through social media)?" Data from surveys of adults aged 18 years and above residing in US from June 1, 2020, and July 31, 2023. The figures are based on a 12-week moving average. Learn more about BrandIndex.
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