Moderna’s Kate Cronin on turning a pandemic hero into an everyday hero

Fresh off pandemic fame, Moderna wants consumers to know how it’s applying mRNA technology to reimagine health and wellness. Among other strategies, the company is leaning into sports and music to reach consumers when they’re likely to be most receptive. 

 

Episode Transcript

Please note, this transcript  may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio.

 

Damian Fowler: (00:01)

I'm Damian Fowler.

Ilyse Lieffring: (00:02)

And I'm Ilyse Liffreing.

Damian Fowler: (00:03)

And welcome to this edition of the current podcast.

Ilyse Lieffring: (00:10)

This week we sit down with Kate Cronin, the chief brand Officer for Moderna.

Damian Fowler: (00:15)

Moderna is a biotech company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The focuses on MRNA therapies and vaccines against a wide range of illnesses including cancer, COVID-19 and the flu.

Ilyse Lieffring: (00:26)

Although the company was founded in 2010, it became a familiar brand name during the pandemic when it received full approval for its CVID 19 vaccine by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Damian Fowler: (00:38)

Since then, it's positioned itself to become a more commercial company and it's opening up direct to consumer marketing channels using digital messaging to reach healthcare providers and patients alike.

Kate Cronin: (00:53)

If you think about the healthcare landscape and where we are, we came out of a pandemic that changed everything. The pandemic turned every company into a healthcare company because companies were focused on the health and wellbeing of either their employees or their constituents or their customers. And that means hotels, airlines, travel, restaurants. It changed everything. And I think what happened is in a post pandemic world, people are laser focused on health and wellness. And looking at Moderna, we are leaning into that new focus on health and wellness and new understanding of health and wellness. And so as a company, we're leaning in on educating the world about our technology and what we believe we're going to do to change the future of healthcare.

Damian Fowler: (01:40)

And on that point, how has that impacted the way you go to market and the way you have rolled out marketing strategies? I understand it's a pretty big shift for the brand.

Kate Cronin: (01:50)

For the first 10 years of Moderna's life, we were an r and d company, so we focused on research and development. That means we studied products, the lab, and we did not have any products commercialized, so we never took a product to market. When Covid struck our CEO realized, hey, we have an opportunity with mRNA to see if our technology works against Covid. And the good news is it did. And so we are super proud of the fact that our first commercial product was for Covid, shot in the arms of billions of people around the world, literally prevented serious disease and hospitalization. And so that changed our company. And because the pandemic was the first time when people actually asked for a vaccine or knew their vaccine by name, you know, people would walk around and say, I, you know, I've got Pfizer or I got Moderna, or whateve