Vice President, Brand Strategy

Vice President, Brand Strategy

Heartbeat is a full-service agency for healthcare Challenger Brands. Challengers are playing a high-stakes game—they must battle behemoth market leaders, upend ingrained treatment habits, or transform a "me-too" product into "yes-please."

The agency is known for serving up distinctive strategies and differentiating approaches, ensuring clients' market positions are uniquely owned. Heartbeat designs their organization around a 100% integration model, housing media, strategy, med comms, creative, technology, and even point of care/population health under the same roof for the tightest, most integrated campaigns possible. They price work based on outcomes, not outputs. Their innovative model delivers not only alignment, but powerful orchestration, greater efficiency, and maximum impact for every dollar spent—all the necessary elements for Challengers to triumph.

That's the philosophy, here's the creds: 250+ employees between NYC & LA; 6 agency leaders with decades of tenure; a pile of awards from the likes of the Mannys, MM&M Awards, OMMAs, and Clios; an industry-leading commitment to diversity and inclusion (with a Med Ad News D&I Champion nod to match); and a President who dared to be quoted as saying, "We celebrate people who stand up and say, 'You know what? This is dumb.' Damn straight.

The Strategy group at Heartbeat is responsible for the development of insights-driven briefs and customer-centered marketing strategies and programs for Heartbeat clients, leveraging all channels to build exceptional brand experiences across relevant touch points. The Strategist owns the understanding of the target audience: what interests and motivates them, where they go for information, what their journey is, what drives their decision making, and how they react to communications. The Strategy group works collaboratively with account management, creative, project management, and technology, ensuring all team members have input on strategy development and are fully briefed on customer insights.

The VP, Strategy must be able to:

• Direct qualitative and quantitative market research
• Synthesize insights from qualitative and quantitative research as well as other data sources
• Understand customer usage of media/channels
• Create briefs and provide input to program design as well as analytics
• Lead brand planning and other strategic planning efforts
• Contribute to new business pitches
• Support the development of the nascent Strategic Planning group, including creation of best practices and agency education

Job Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in marketing, anthropology/sociology or psychology (preferred)
• 7-10 years' experience in healthcare marketing/planning
• Oncology experience strongly preferred

Skills Requirements:

• Demonstrated ability to think comprehensively and proactively about brand marketing strategy
• Experience in generating and strategically applying both qualitative and quantitative research
• Experience conducting strategic planning across all target audiences (i.e. HCP, Patient, Payer) and all channels (i.e. traditional in-person reps and conferences, social media, print, digital)
• Exceptional writing, communications, and presentation skills, both in developing the story architecture and delivering compelling presentations
• Strong curiosity, ability to deal with ambiguity, work autonomously and a preference for a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment
• Excellent interpersonal skills and teamwork skills, with ability to work across agency and network teams
• Ideal: experience in the nutrition/wellness category

Our Publicis Groupe motto "Viva La Différence" means we're better together, and we believe that our differences make us stronger. It means we honor and celebrate all identities, across all facets of intersectionality, and it underpins all that we do as an organization. We are focused on fostering belonging and creating equitable & inclusive experiences for all talent.

Publicis Groupe provides robust and inclusive benefit programs and policies to support the evolving and diverse needs of our talent and enable every person to grow and thrive. Our benefits package includes medical coverage, dental, vision, disability, 401K, as well as parental and family care leave, family forming assistance, tuition reimbursement, and flexible time off.

If you require accommodation or assistance with the application or onboarding process specifically, please contact View email address on click.appcast.io. All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

Compensation Range: $76.78/hr.- $105.05/hr. This is the pay range the Company believes it will pay for this position at the time of this posting. Consistent with applicable law, compensation will be determined based on the skills, qualifications, and experience of the applicant along with the requirements of the position, and the Company reserves the right to modify this pay range at any time. Temporary roles may be eligible to participate in our freelancer/temporary employee medical plan through a third-party benefits administration system once certain criteria have been met. Temporary roles may also qualify for participation in our 401(k) plan after eligibility criteria have been met. For regular roles, the Company will offer medical coverage, dental, vision, disability, 401k, and paid time off. The Company anticipates the application deadline for this job posting will be 07/16/2026.