In healthcare advertising, one of the most persistent challenges is bridging the distance between scientific rigor and real human understanding. It is a space shaped by complex information, careful compliance considerations, and a cultural environment where people are increasingly selective about what they trust. Within that landscape, a new kind of strategist has become essential: someone who can translate scientific concepts into stories people can genuinely connect with. Linda Liu, a Marketing Strategist at Leo (Publicis Groupe), is part of that shift, helping shape how major healthcare brands communicate with the world.
Liu’s background is as multifaceted as the campaigns she helps shape. A graduate of Yale University with dual degrees in Psychology and Economics, she brings a rare ability to synthesize behavioral insight with complex market data. Her experience as a former Division I fencer adds a competitive discipline and level of focus that carries directly into her work, informing the rigor and resilience she brings to high-pressure strategic challenges. Since joining the Pfizer Corporate Branding team at Leo (Publicis Groupe) in early 2024, she has played a key role in shaping strategic narratives for several large-scale healthcare initiatives, helping bridge scientific complexity with human connection.
Her portfolio includes contributing to the strategy behind Pfizer’s 2025 Super Bowl campaign, Knock Out, an emotional film that highlighted patient resilience and the human impact of oncology innovation. She has also helped shape the Here’s to Science campaign and the strategic development of the PfizerForAll platform. Beyond high-visibility creative work, Liu is deeply involved in competitive intelligence, supporting agency leadership and clients as they navigate the evolving post-pandemic healthcare landscape through the weekly publication, The Pulse.
In this exclusive interview with New York Art Life, Liu discusses the intersection of data and empathy in her work, the complexities of humanizing science in an age of rising skepticism, and how her background in psychology, economics, and elite athletics shapes her approach to narrative strategy. She also reflects on broader shifts in healthcare communications toward more meaningful, trust-building storytelling.
New York Art Life: Linda, your academic background at Yale combined Psychology and Economics, essentially the study of how the mind works and how markets function. How does that dual discipline influence your day-to-day work as a strategist in healthcare?
Linda Liu: It’s the foundation of everything I do. In advertising, especially healthcare strategy, there’s always a tension between the quantitative and the qualitative. Economics gave me a deep understanding of how markets move and why numbers matter, not just as data points, but as signals of human behavior. Psychology helped me interpret those signals, adding the context and emotional truth that data alone can’t capture.
Behavioral economics reminds us that humans are rarely rational actors, especially when it comes to their health. When a patient receives a diagnosis or a caregiver is searching for answers, they aren’t optimizing for utility in a mathematical sense; they are navigating fear, hope, confusion, and love. My job as a strategist is to stand in that intersection. I use my economics background to understand the “what” and the “where” of the market, and I rely on my psychology background to decode the “why” behind people’s choices and emotions. That’s where strategy becomes meaningful.
NYAL: You were a member of the Yale Varsity Fencing Team and a Division 1 athlete. Fencing is often described as “physical chess.” Do you see a parallel between the strategy required on the strip and the strategy needed in a creative agency?
Linda Liu: Absolutely. Fencing teaches you to stay a half-beat ahead, picking up subtle cues and sensing what someone will do before they commit to it. You have to read your opponent’s micro-expressions, anticipate their next move, and have a strategy ready to counter it before they even lunge. In many ways, that is exactly what a strategist does for a brand.
In the agency world, the “opponent” isn’t a person; it’s the shifting cultural landscape, misinformation, or even consumer apathy. Just like in fencing, you can’t be purely reactive. If you wait for the market to move before you do, you’ve already lost the point. That’s why I spend so much time analyzing the competitive landscape through audits and social listening, looking for the white space where a brand can move with purpose.
NYAL: You’ve contributed to several major initiatives for the Pfizer Corporate Branding team at Leo, including the Knock Out Super Bowl campaign. Can you walk us through the strategic intent behind that work?
Linda Liu: Working on the strategy for Knock Out was a career highlight because it marked a significant shift in the category’s tone. Historically, pharmaceutical advertising, especially in oncology, has leaned somber, clinical, and often passive. But when we looked closely at the cultural sentiment and patient experience, we found a clear disconnect. Patients aren’t passive; they’re fighters. Families are resilient. There’s a grit and determination in the cancer community that should be reflected in the stories we tell.
Our strategy centered on honoring patient resilience and framing the cancer journey as a fight: a moment of stepping into the ring. For the 2025 Super Bowl, the intention was to create a cultural statement, not just a campaign, by bringing the emotional energy of a fight to a story that’s often told clinically.
My role involved helping shape that narrative foundation, ensuring that, while we were bold, we were also deeply empathetic. It was gratifying to see the industry response: the campaign ranked among DAIVID’s most emotionally engaging Super Bowl ads and received recognition from outlets like Adweek and FiercePharma. But more importantly, it felt like we were honoring the fighting spirit of the patients we serve.
NYAL: Before Knock Out, you worked on the Here’s to Science campaign for the 2024 Super Bowl. That moment was about reintroducing Pfizer to a mass audience. How do you approach the challenge of bringing humanity into a science-forward message?
Linda Liu: Here’s to Science was about legacy and future, simultaneously. We were dealing with a brand with a 175-year history, yet public perception was heavily anchored in the immediate context of the pandemic. A key part of the strategy I helped shape was widening the aperture, encouraging audiences to see Pfizer not through a single vaccine, but through the broader arc of scientific discovery and long-term commitment to improving lives.
From a strategic standpoint, bringing humanity into a science-forward message meant moving beyond technical language and focusing on what scientific progress represents in people’s lives. For many audiences, that translates to hope, possibility, and the ability to imagine a future that feels larger than a diagnosis or a moment in time. Grounding the work in those emotional truths helped shift the message from abstract science to something people could personally connect with.
NYAL: Trust in science has become a polarizing topic. How does purpose-driven storytelling help bridge that gap?
Linda Liu: Trust is the currency of our industry. Without it, even the best scientific progress can’t make an impact if people won’t engage with it. Rebuilding that trust requires transparency and a clear demonstration of purpose. Purpose-driven storytelling shifts the focus from “look at how great we are” to “look at what we can achieve together.”
In my work, I rely heavily on data to understand where the trust gaps actually lie. Is the skepticism about efficacy? Is it the feeling that the healthcare system is impersonal? Once those barriers are identified, storytelling becomes a way to address them with clarity and empathy.
A lot of my experience comes from competitive intelligence and social listening, where I track real-time sentiment. If we see a rise in anxiety around a particular health topic, we can adjust our strategy to focus more on education and reassurance. Purpose-driven storytelling is about being useful. It means creating content that empowers the patient to make informed decisions. When a brand behaves like a helpful resource rather than a monolith, trust begins to return.
NYAL: You mentioned the importance of data. I understand you played a key role in the Eliquis No Time to Wait global pitch, specifically regarding consumer testing. Can you walk us through that process?
Linda Liu: The Eliquis pitch was a great example of how data can strengthen creative intuition. We were competing with other agencies to win Pfizer’s global creative business, so it wasn’t enough to present compelling ideas. We needed to demonstrate confidence in how real people would actually respond.
I led a nationwide consumer testing survey using Alchemer, gathering feedback from 350 respondents to evaluate multiple strategic territories and tonal directions. The insights helped us identify which message frameworks resonated the most clearly and gave the pitch team grounded, data-driven rationale for our recommendation. That insight allowed the team to narrow the field to a smaller set of high-performing territories that we ultimately brought forward in the pitch.
By grounding our recommendation in real audience response, we were able to present a more focused, defensible strategy. I also supported the final pitch presentation, and when we won the business, it was validating to see how consumer insight played a direct role in shaping the work we put in front of the client.
NYAL: You created and manage The Pulse, a weekly brand intelligence publication. What is the philosophy behind that project?
Linda Liu: The Pulse was created to bring clarity to a very noisy landscape. Healthcare is constantly in motion, from competitor campaigns to cultural conversations to new clinical developments. Teams are often aware of what’s happening, but they don’t always have the space to step back and understand what it means strategically.
I serve as the lead strategist, managing editor, and writer for the publication, which reaches more than 100 marketing and strategy leaders. Each week, I curate and synthesize what’s happening across the industry into three pillars: Big Things (major category or policy moves), Competitive (how other brands are showing up), and Health & Culture (how health appears in broader cultural conversations).
At the core of The Pulse is the “What It Means” section. For every story, I translate information into insight by explaining why it matters and what implications it has for brand strategy. The goal is to help teams move beyond headlines and develop a shared point of view, so decisions are grounded in context rather than reaction. Over time, The Pulse has become a trusted weekly rhythm that helps teams think more strategically about where the category is heading.
NYAL: You’ve also worked on the PfizerForAll platform, including activations with Walgreens. How do you see digital tools reshaping the patient experience today?
Linda Liu: The healthcare journey has traditionally been fragmented. People move between a doctor’s office, a pharmacy, their insurance portal, and online search, often with little connection between those moments. My work on PfizerForAll focused on reducing that friction by making information easier to navigate and helping people understand where to go next.
For the Walgreens partnership, the strategy was to use clear, direct messaging at high-visibility touchpoints, such as receipts and sanitizer stations, to bridge the gap between the physical store and the digital platform. We wanted to position PfizerForAll not just as another website, but as a practical tool that streamlines the experience. More connected digital ecosystems like this make it easier for people to access information and take the next step in their health journey.
NYAL: Let’s talk about health equity. You played a key role in shaping the strategic direction for the Health Empowerment Panel at the Essence Festival. From your perspective, why is it valuable for health brands to participate in cultural spaces like this?
Linda Liu: Health equity isn’t a buzzword; it’s a real and persistent issue in our healthcare system. There are well-documented disparities in health outcomes, particularly for Black women, who face higher risks in areas like maternal health, cardiovascular disease, and cancer detection. Brands have an opportunity to contribute meaningfully by showing up with intention and care. But showing up can’t be performative. An authentic presence requires understanding the community, respecting the space, and designing experiences that genuinely meet people’s needs.
For the Essence Festival, our focus was on creating an environment that felt welcoming, safe, and empowering. The Health Empowerment Panel was designed around lived experience, featuring women who shared their own health journeys and created space for honest dialogue about taking ownership of one’s health. I helped lead the strategy and content development behind the panel, shaping the session’s narrative, conversation flow, and panelist questions to ensure the discussion remained grounded in real experience.
Beyond the panel, the PfizerForAll booth functioned as a resource hub rather than a traditional brand installation. Attendees could access information about screenings, preventive care, and affordability programs, and many stayed to have meaningful conversations about the barriers they face in the healthcare system. Over 8,000 people visited the booth, which reinforced the importance of meeting people in trusted cultural spaces with tools that feel relevant and useful.
When a brand participates in a cultural event like Essence in this way, it signals a willingness to engage directly with communities that are often underserved in traditional healthcare spaces. It’s a step toward building trust and fostering dialogue in a meaningful way.
NYAL: Moving back to the complex data that informs these interactions, you developed a Competitive Alerts system and a rigorous competitive intelligence framework. In a field as regulated as pharma, why is real-time competitive agility so important?
Linda Liu: There is a misconception that pharma moves slowly. While clinical trials may take years, the public conversation around health moves at the speed of social media. A competitor might launch a new campaign, a celebrity might share a diagnosis, or a piece of misinformation might go viral on TikTok. If a brand is not monitoring those shifts in real time, it risks operating in a vacuum.
I developed the competitive intelligence framework using tools like NetBase, Quid, and Google Trends to ensure we aren’t just looking at what competitors put into the market, but how they show up and communicate. The “Competitive Alerts” system is designed for immediacy. When a competitor shifts tone, changes position, or introduces a new narrative, we flag it quickly so teams can understand what’s changing and why it matters.
For example, during the Competitive Landscape and Category Intelligence Initiative, we tracked how different brands used social platforms. Some treated social purely as a one-way broadcast channel, pushing out generic awareness ads, while others focused on community-building and dialogue. Surfacing those patterns in real time allows us to identify emerging white space and advise leadership while decisions are still being made, not after the moment has passed. The goal is to keep long-term strategy responsive in a fast-moving cultural landscape.
NYAL: You mentioned opportunities for “white space”. You recently co-led a comprehensive oncology audit that examined competitors and several advocacy groups. What did you learn about where brands can better support patients?
Linda Liu: The goal of the audit was to understand how different brands were showing up in the oncology space across channels and where there were gaps in the overall conversation. We looked at everything from tone and message architecture to the kinds of resources being offered and how advocacy groups were framing education and support.
What stood out most was how fragmented the competitive landscape was. Some brands focused heavily on clinical data, while others leaned into broad awareness messaging. Very few were speaking to the practical or emotional realities that patients and caregivers navigate every day, such as managing uncertainty or feeling confident in next steps.
The behavioral white space wasn’t a single narrative territory. It was the opportunity to create communication that feels genuinely useful and empowering at moments when people are seeking clarity. Patients today are much more proactive. They research their options, ask informed questions, and want to feel equipped to make decisions about their care. Acknowledging that agency creates space for more meaningful engagement than simply presenting information to them.
The audit also informed how we think about tone and content in future work, especially the need for communication that feels clear, empathetic, and genuinely useful. In oncology marketing, differentiation isn’t just about a brand’s visual identity; it comes from meeting people with the kind of support they actually need.
NYAL: Your work also includes crafting award submissions for programs like Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, and Fast Company. What does it take to successfully frame creative and strategic work for industry recognition?
Linda Liu: The core story always stays consistent, but the framing changes depending on the audience. Award juries aren’t just evaluating the idea; they’re evaluating the thinking behind it. The challenge is translating creative work into a narrative that clearly articulates the strategy, the insight, and the impact.
For example, in submissions for Fast Company, we focused on articulating how the brand’s legacy and recent initiatives reflect a commitment to meaningful impact. The goal was to connect its history with the ways it is adapting to meet people’s needs today. That work ultimately contributed to Pfizer being named a Fast Company “Brands That Matter” honoree, which recognized the brand’s evolution into a more purpose-driven, emotionally resonant communicator.
Award programs like the Effies require a slightly different discipline. They ask you to reconstruct the strategic journey in a way that is evidence-led: identifying the challenge, uncovering the insight, detailing the approach, and explaining why it resonated. It is a more analytical form of storytelling, almost like building a case study, and it plays an important role in how the industry evaluates effectiveness.
NYAL: Let’s look at the Madison Square Garden out-of-home activation. Out-of-home (OOH) advertising is a very different beast compared to digital or TV. How did you adapt the messaging for a high-traffic, physical environment like MSG?
Linda Liu: Context is everything in strategy. Madison Square Garden is high-energy, loud, and constantly moving. People are there for entertainment, whether it’s a Knicks game or a concert; they’re not there to think about healthcare. If you put up a billboard with a paragraph of text about clinical trials, it essentially becomes invisible.
For the MSG activation, which ran across digital boards and delivered tens of millions of impressions, the strategy was to interrupt through simplicity. We had to distill the value of PfizerForAll down to its essence. You can’t explain an entire platform in a few seconds, but you can plant a seed.
We focused on bold visuals and short, punchy lines that could cut through the energy of the venue. The goal wasn’t to explain everything about PfizerForAll, but to create a moment of recognition that could build familiarity over time.
NYAL: Before focusing on the corporate brand, you worked across a multi-brand portfolio at Publicis Health, touching on products like Orgovyx and Rinvoq. How does product-level strategy differ from the corporate master-brand work you do now?
Linda Liu: Product-level strategy is much more specific and tactical. When I worked on brands such as Orgovyx for prostate cancer or Rinvoq for arthritis, the objectives were often clearly defined. The focus might be differentiating the brand within the competitive landscape or encouraging more informed conversations between patients and their healthcare providers.
With Orgovyx, for example, we were working with the insight that it’s one of the few oral therapies in a category traditionally dominated by injections. The strategy centered on understanding how that difference fits into a patient’s lived experience and how it shapes daily routines. We examined how other treatments in the category communicated their value and identified that a sense of control was an important emotional priority for many men managing prostate cancer. That helped inform how we framed the brief and the kinds of stories that would resonate.
Corporate branding, on the other hand, is about articulating the broader character and purpose of the company. It’s less about explaining what a specific medicine does and more about the values and commitments that guide the organization. My experience at the product level gives me insight into the micro-struggles patients navigate, which helps ensure that the corporate work isn’t too high-level or detached. You need that granular perspective to build purpose-driven work that still feels connected to real people.
NYAL: You are currently involved in early-stage strategy work for future campaigns. What are the unique challenges of developing a strategy for work that may not launch for several years?
Linda Liu: The biggest challenge is forecasting the cultural mood. When you’re working on long-lead strategic development, you’re essentially planning for a future environment that doesn’t exist yet. You have to ask broad questions like, “What will people care about?” and “How will conversations around health evolve by the time this launches?”
One approach we use is scenario planning. We look at macro-trends: shifts in consumer expectations, changes in digital behavior, and the ways technology is beginning to shape how people understand their health. From there, we build flexible strategic frameworks that can adapt as the world changes. You can’t design a strategy only for today, because today won’t be the environment the campaign ultimately enters.
The goal is to establish a foundation that’s durable enough to guide creative development over time, yet adaptable enough to grow with the culture. It’s always a balance between clarity and elasticity.
NYAL: You’ve developed messaging frameworks that speak to both consumers and healthcare professionals. How do you approach the challenge of communicating to two audiences with such different needs?
Linda Liu: Communicating to both consumers and healthcare professionals is more similar than people assume. The contexts are different, but both groups want information that feels clear, respectful, and genuinely helpful. The difference lies in how you frame the problem each audience is trying to solve.
When I develop messaging frameworks for dual audiences, I start by understanding what each group is trying to solve in that moment. Healthcare professionals need information that fits into an already demanding workflow, so the tone becomes more concise and utility-driven. Consumers, on the other hand, want guidance that feels approachable and relevant to their day-to-day decisions. The core idea stays the same, but the expression shifts to match the moment they’re in.
The challenge is keeping both audiences anchored in the same core idea while tailoring the language, tone, and proof points. When the balance is right, the work resonates across both worlds without diluting the message.
NYAL: Your resume highlights early roles where you worked on brands like Walmart and Acura before moving to healthcare. What did consumer packaged goods (CPG) and automotive brands teach you about shaping health communication?
Linda Liu: My time at MullenLowe with Acura and at Publicis New York with Walmart taught me how much you have to fight for attention. Nobody wakes up hoping to see a car ad or a toothpaste ad; you have to earn their eyeballs.
At Walmart, I analyzed social content performance and learned quickly that social content needs a strong hook; it has to give people a reason to stop scrolling. When I moved into healthcare, I noticed that the industry sometimes assumes the seriousness of the topic guarantees engagement. It doesn’t. People scroll past health content just as quickly as they scroll past everything else.
I brought that consumer mindset into my healthcare work. Whether it’s a large brand moment or a simple social post, I always ask whether the message is interesting and clear right away. The principles of engagement are universal. The stakes in healthcare are higher, but the fundamentals of human attention are the same.
NYAL: As a final question, looking at your trajectory from a competitive fencer and pianist to a leading strategist at a top agency, what advice would you give to young professionals looking to break into creative strategy?
Linda Liu: My biggest piece of advice is to embrace being multidimensional. I think of myself first and foremost as a marketing strategist, but the best strategists I know draw from many different parts of themselves. You don’t have to choose between being analytical or creative; strategy lives right in the middle.
I also believe in studying things outside of advertising. My psychology degree helps me understand people. My economics background helps me understand how decisions get made. Fencing taught me timing and how to think under pressure. Piano taught me discipline and how to break complex pieces into manageable parts. None of these things are “about” strategy, but all of them shape how I approach the work.
And finally, develop a thick skin and a soft heart. You need the thick skin to handle feedback, revisions, and the realities of the industry. But you need the soft heart to stay connected to the human side of the work. In healthcare especially, if you lose your ability to feel what the patient might be feeling, you lose the foundation of the craft. Stay curious, stay empathetic, and keep looking for the human story behind every brief.
