Senior Vice President, Earned Media Strategy

About the Opportunity:    

The Weber Shandwick team is seeking an Account Director, Earned Media Strategy with exceptional earned strategy and media relations prowess to support CPG, Retail and Food & Beverage clients. This role offers the opportunity to work on top-tier brands across multiple consumer categories, helping them earn meaningful attention in culture.

About you:

You live for a great pitch and have the media relationships to back it up. With deep knowledge of top-tier lifestyle, entertainment, sports, broadcast, food & beverage, and business outlets, you know how to get stories placed — and noticed. You move seamlessly between traditional media and emerging platforms like Substack, podcasts, and content creators. Fluent in internet culture and always ahead of the trends, you know what’s buzzy, what’s next, and how to help brands break through.

You’re a strategic thinker who thrives in fast-paced environments and knows how to manage multi-faceted, integrated campaigns without missing a beat. You bring structure to chaos, all while juggling deadlines, media moments, and client needs with calm confidence. You’re immersed in pop culture and entertainment and know how to turn cultural insight into earned impact. A creative storyteller and collaborative partner, you bring curiosity, originality, and hustle to everything you do. Ready to make waves with a team of leading earned strategists? Let’s talk. 

Responsibilities:

• Build and maintain excellent relationships with top-tier media across business, national/local broadcast, and lifestyle verticals — including men’s/women’s interest, fitness, food & beverage, wellness, sports, entertainment, and commerce
• Maintain a strong understanding of the media and cultural landscape, as well as emerging issues that may impact clients directly or indirectly

• Approaches client work with curiosity — always seeking to understand the brand, its competitors, and the broader industry context

• Proactively and reactively crafts compelling, newsworthy stories that drive earned coverage
• Lead the development and execution of earned and integrated media programs from start to finish
• Lead and develop comprehensive earned media strategies  
• Draft high-quality internal and external facing media materials, including briefing documents, Q + A, pitches, press releases, and messaging documents
• Deliver consistently high-caliber work with a client-first mindset and sharp attention to detail
• Counsel and interact effectively with clients and leaders at client organizations
• Collaborates effectively with agency and inter-agency partners, serving as a key contributor across teams to drive alignment and deliver cohesive, large-scale campaign work
• Mentors and develops junior team members through hands-on guidance, feedback, and professional development
• Cultivates and participates in new business opportunities and pitches
• Spotting and executing quick turn and client relevant culture tapping earned storytelling opportunities

 Competencies:

• Business Acumen– align talent strategies to drive business goals
• Client Service– client focus and ability to build trust and rapport across all levels
• Proactivity – exhibit relentless pursuit for new and innovative talent strategies
• Collaboration– build strong relationships at all levels across the organization
• Critical Thinking– ask probing questions; anticipate and address critical talent gaps and needs
• Conflict Resolution– possess sound judgment and savvy in navigating and resolving complex talent and organizational issues

Basic Qualifications:

• 6-8 years of experience.  
• Experience leading projects from start to finish, working with integrated teams across various disciplines.
• Earned strategy and media relations experience
• Bachelor’s degree 

The Weber Shandwick Collective recognizes that your health and wellbeing are a priority. This is why we offer a full suite of benefits including:

• Medical
• Dental
• Vision
• 401k (with employer match)
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Juice Money – $60 monthly reimbursement to be used towards purchases that nourish your health, mind, body, and soul
• MyDays – Flexible holiday schedules
• Short-Term Disability
• Paid Employee Family Leave
• Family Building Benefit

Salary range: $100,000 – $130,000

Where an employee or prospective employee is paid within this range will depend on, among other factors, actual ranges for current/former employees in the subject position; market considerations; budgetary considerations; tenure and standing with the company (applicable to current employees); as well as the employee’s/applicant’s background, pertinent experience, and qualifications.

Weber Shandwick is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. Weber Shandwick recruits qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, age, ethnic or national origin, protected veteran status, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or citizenship status.

#LI-JP1 

We Are Seeking

We are seeking an Account Director to join our Media Relations team within our Health Practice. As a Director, you will be responsible for leading all aspects of media relations as a key member of integrated client teams.  You’ll shape communications strategies, craft earned media approaches, and organize best-in-class media outreach that drive results and positive impact.  You’ll bring experience working in the health industry with a proven track record of managing branded and unbranded campaigns with media and third parties.

 

A critical role in our client teams and in our health practice, you’ll be a go-to client contact and supervise large workstreams, junior team members and work to connect dots across business.  Other responsibilities include shaping earned-first creative concepts, recommending programs and activities, coordinating with clients’ goals, effectively delegating projects, offering counsel to team members, and allocating agency resources to match client budgets.

 

Beyond client work, you’ll also engage in our business development process and support activities that support the development of our health media relations function. 

 

The following is a general outline of primary responsibilities.

 

Additional responsibilities include but are not limited to:

• Day-to-day client support and counsel
• Leading media relations efforts for team including managing junior staff
• Driving communications support around campaigns
• Working across internal and external specialists including media, digital, creative and agency partners
• Providing earned media recommendations across traditional print/online media, newer forms of media, and editorial partnerships

 

What We Are Looking For

• Strong sense of accountability and ownership
• Ability to mobilize and motivate teams
• Flexibility in having impact as part of a team and as an individual contributor
• Excellent oral and written business communication skills
• Strong judgment when working with team members, client contacts and vendors
• Commitment and dedication to the agency’s success as well as individual career
• Can anticipate client and team needs
• Attention to detail and quality
• Instills confidence with clients and colleagues

 

Qualifications

• At least 7 years’ healthcare public relations/communications experience, including an interest in working with the media
• BA or BS in Communications or in a related field

 

The Weber Shandwick Collective recognizes that your health and wellbeing are a priority. This is why we offer a full suite of benefits including:

• Medical
• Dental
• Vision
• 401k (with employer match)
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Juice Money – $60 monthly reimbursement to be used towards purchases that nourish your health, mind, body, and soul
• MyDays – Flexible holiday schedules
• Short-Term Disability
• Paid Employee Family Leave
• Family Building Benefit

NYC Salary range: $109,000 – $130,000

Where an employee or prospective employee is paid within this range will depend on, among other factors, actual ranges for current/former employees in the subject position; market considerations; budgetary considerations; tenure and standing with the company (applicable to current employees); as well as the employee’s/applicant’s background, pertinent experience, and qualifications.

 

Weber Shandwick is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. Weber Shandwick recruits qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, age, ethnic or national origin, protected veteran status, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or citizenship status.

#LI-JR1

 

We Are Seeking
We are seeking a strong Vice President to join our Media Relations team within our Health Practice. We are looking for someone who knows the media landscape, has a unique experience telling stories, and strong ability to counsel clients on and execute integrated media relations strategy. The following is a general outline of primary responsibilities.
What You Will Be Doing

• Serves as key integrated team member and day-to-day client contact in support of strategic earned media campaigns, including developing media relations action plans, goals and objectives, media targets, story angles and outreach approaches, in collaboration with and support from senior media relations experts
• Develop a strong understanding of the client’s business and target audiences, and work collaboratively with strategists, digital and creative team members to deliver solutions that meet program objectives.
• Foster growth and team talent as a leader on the health media team, including management of mid to junior health media team members.
• Have positive relationships with health, business and consumer reporters, understand industry issues that directly and indirectly affect clients and the media landscape, and analyze and distill meaningful insights from media coverage.
• Generate story ideas and topic angles, oversee team in developing media materials, and pitch media to land earned coverage.
• Develop and lead corporate communications and executive visibility programs for leadership, including research/vetting opportunities, speaking/events, thought leadership content and awards.
• Develop strategic messaging for clients and support creation of media plans and proposals that take an integrated approach to driving awareness with target audiences.
• Leverage external voices (e.g. advocates, physicians, patients, bloggers/vloggers and other relatable voices) to impact clients, their brands and marketing goals.
• Provide thoughtful recommendations for content creation and distribution across multiple channels to support paid, owned and earned channels.
• Support creative ideation on a consistent basis.
• Participation in office-wide initiatives, seminars, and meetings to further professional learning and development.
• Actively participate in agency development and assist with new business.

Competencies

• Business Acumen– align talent strategies to drive business goals
• Client Service– client focus and ability to build trust and rapport across all levels
• Proactivity – exhibit relentless pursuit for new and innovative talent strategies
• Collaboration– build strong relationships at all levels across the organization
• Critical Thinking– ask probing questions; anticipate and address critical talent gaps and needs
• Conflict Resolution– possess sound judgment and savvy in navigating and resolving complex talent and organizational issues

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing, Communications, Public Relations or related field
• 8-10 years’ PR/communications experience
• Media relations experience

 

LA Salary range: $145,000 – $180,000

Where an employee or prospective employee is paid within this range will depend on, among other factors, actual ranges for current/former employees in the subject position; market considerations; budgetary considerations; tenure and standing with the company (applicable to current employees); as well as the employee’s/applicant’s background, pertinent experience, and qualifications.

 

The Weber Shandwick Collective recognizes that your health and wellbeing are a priority. This is why we offer a full suite of benefits including:

• Medical
• Dental
• Vision
• 401k (with employer match)
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Juice Money – $60 monthly reimbursement to be used towards purchases that nourish your health, mind, body, and soul
• MyDays – Flexible holiday schedules
• Short-Term Disability
• Paid Employee Family Leave
• Family Building Benefit

Weber Shandwick is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. Weber Shandwick recruits qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, age, ethnic or national origin, protected veteran status, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or citizenship status.

#LI-JR1