This campaign pushed overall vaccine awareness and consideration for bivalent boosters, but not a specific drug or vaccine.

Entertainment has a greater ability to unite a mass audience of many differing political ideals than contemporary news outlets. In a YouGov poll, the news outlet most trusted by voters from both parties was the Weather Channel.

Moderna's JEOPARDY! Second Chance Tournament deftly used an entertainment partner to further its mission of public good and community well-being while ensuring that our message remained non-partisan. This was crucial to ensuring bivalent boosters remained an accessible resource for as many at-risk people as possible.

With COVID-19 still factoring into the public dynamic, Moderna needed to find a platform to speak to an at-risk (A50+) audience, informing them of the benefits of a bivalent booster.

The Moderna vaccine was a true game changer. The booster was an evolution of that

pharmaceutical breakthrough, but it entered into a media market of complacency and misinformation.

With the roll back of federal mask mandates, many believed the worst of the pandemic to be over. Though people were understandably eager to reclaim their social lives, the rise of new, more infectious COVID mutations required clear, accurate information with tangible action plans.

We needed to boost the benefits of boosters to millions of people.

With a subject as delicate and personal as vaccines, we had to combat mistrust around misinformation, as well as skepticism over side effects and efficacy. We needed our message to promote confidence and vigilance, in a soft, palatable manner.

The channel had to be a true awareness driver to a mass general audience. Public trust is crucial for a brand like Moderna, and the more consolidated the channel and message can be, the easier it is to ensure a net public good.

We would leverage the TV Show JEOPARDY!, which offered impressive exposure to a mass general audience, many of whom are highly engaged. Crucially, the show is trusted for its intellect and celebrated for its earnestness. We knew their credibility would amplify the benefits of Moderna’s latest breakthrough to millions in an inviting way, inspiring action and encouraging public good.

JEOPARDY! fans are highly invested in the show. The audience is faithful, often watching each episode ritualistically. Pivotally for us, 7.7M people 55+ watch JEOPARDY!, with an appealing balance between male-identifying (3.1M) and female-identifying (4.6M) viewers.

Online, JEOPARDY! fans share affection for charismatic contestants who do well on the show. When these fan favorites eventually lose, JEOPARDY!’s online evangelists celebrate the streak, often expressing excitement on when that contestant can return to the stage (for example, the show’s Tournament of Champions), or speculating whether a swing in the gameplay could have meant a longer run.

That intrigue was what we wanted to foster, ensuring we could get social lift and page views from fans emotionally invested in the show’s competitors. We would sponsor a follow-up show that would connect with the show’s mass audience, while seamlessly integrating Moderna’s message of innovation and vigilance into the gameplay.

We decided we could channel JEOPARDY! fan speculation into a first-of-its-kind rewriting of the show’s rules.

Moderna sponsored the first ever JEOPARDY! Second Chance tournament. For the first time ever, we’d call back 18 fan favorites from Season 38 who came so close to winning, but couldn’t pull it off.

Throughout the 4 week competition, Moderna wove in its “game changer” messaging and timely reminders on the importance of boosters. We underscored our key message with the show’s Clue For You segment, a stand-alone modular segment with a customized clue/response written in the style of the show’s iconic game clues.

This Clue For You was a perfect vessel to leverage the show’s credibility to convey actionable advice regarding Moderna’s advancements and innovations to JEOPARDY!’s mass linear audience. Those same fans would be on social and on the competition landing page, where they could learn more about the booster.

During the tournament's run, on average 8.9 million people tuned in every evening.

Crucially, we delivered timely booster messaging to our at-risk A50+ audience, averaging 7.6M viewers(6.47RTG) throughout the 10 episodes.

During the four weeks of pre-promo and the tournament campaign, Moderna-branded content garnered 60% more impressions on average month-over-month across all digital channels.

On social channels, we tallied 445k video views across 36 posts.

On Twitter, Moderna-branded posts averaged 75% more impressions than non-branded counterparts. On Instagram, branded posts outperformed unbranded posts by 39%. The properties also drove massive traffic.

The Second Chance Tournament was one of October’s main traffic drivers to the JEOPARDY! website. Our banners tallied 1.2M pageviews, with 52k clicking through to the tournament-specific landing page.

Affiliates in the top 30 markets ran our promos a total of 970 times, we picked up mentions on superfan podcasts, and won headlines from Distractify, Uproxx and Yahoo! Entertainment.

The U.S. media market regarding COVID continues to be a navigational challenge. In a study done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 78% of adults either believed or were not sure about at least one of eight false statements about COVID.

Even for the uncertain, a fragmented collective truth increases skepticism, with some even doubting the scientific process itself.

That skepticism is an expressive American right covered under free speech, which can make the discourse surrounding COVID, particularly vaccines, politically charged.

It was vital to us to serve a non-partisan mass majority of people, given the boosters’ protective power for a large at-risk audience. That meant our message had to be inviting without condescension.

The JEOPARDY! fandom is impressively non-political. The show earns its audience’s passionate loyalty not via editorial bent, but by exuding timeless values of intellect, persistence, and academic knowledge.

Moderna's JEOPARDY! Second Chance Tournament shines a light on the game changing COVID-19 vaccine, while emphasizing the importance of continued preparedness. Moderna recognized its responsibility to build on its pharmaceutical breakthrough to continue to help protect at risk communities. That responsibility includes determining an effective and trusted way of communicating to them the benefits of their bivalent booster.

This campaign effectively cut through a media market saturated with misinformation to present helpful, life-saving information to an audience that needed it.

Emergency Use Approved COVID-19 Vaccines cannot participate in branded campaigns until full FDA Authorization. All EUA COVID-19 vaccine campaigns must be unbranded.

Given the far-reaching effects of COVID-19, we needed to reach as many people as possible, especially those in the largest at-risk mass audience, age 50+. With the widespread public availability of free bivalent boosters, we needed to establish broad public trust.