Will Jones
Photo Courtesy of Linda Liu
When someone receives a serious medical diagnosis, the instinct is rarely to research, act, or engage. It’s to shut down. “What people need to hear and what fear allows them to absorb are rarely the same thing,” she says. Linda Liu has spent her career studying that gap and building campaigns precise enough to close it.
Liu is a marketing strategist at Publicis Groupe, where she works on Pfizer’s Corporate Branding Team. Her job, on paper, is to develop campaign strategy. In practice, it’s something closer to behavioral architecture: figuring out why people avoid acting on health information they know would benefit them and designing campaigns compelling enough to get them to take the first step in their treatment journey.
Cancer advertising has long relied on polished optimism and broad awareness slogans that reassured people without prompting them to act. Liu built her reputation by asking a harder question: what does it actually take for someone facing a serious diagnosis to stop avoiding and start acting? “Fear interrupts people before information even reaches them,” she says. “No amount of well-crafted messaging can reach someone who has already stopped listening.” It’s a simple observation, but for Liu, it’s the principle that shapes everything: every brief she writes, every campaign she builds, every message she tests before it reaches an audience of millions.
That work has influenced some of the most culturally significant and impactful healthcare advertising in recent memory. Pfizer’s 2025 Super Bowl campaign “Knock Out” reached more than 120 million viewers and drove millions of visits to PfizerForAll.com in the hours after it aired. For Liu, those numbers reflect something bigger than scale; they reflect a deliberate shift in how pharmaceutical brands talk to people facing serious illness. Projections tied to the 2026 global campaign “Every Breakthrough Matters” later estimated 500,000 additional cancer screenings connected to its reach after it launched in Times Square on World Cancer Day. Behind both campaigns, shaping the strategic foundation before any creative work began, was Liu.
Before the Campaign, There’s the Person
Most healthcare campaigns start by figuring out what they want to say. Liu starts with understanding the person at the receiving end: their fears, their avoidance patterns, and the emotional barriers standing between them and action.
That approach became most visible during Publicis Groupe’s pitch for Pfizer’s Eliquis business. Personally selected by Publicis’s Chief Strategy Officer to join a team composed entirely of C-suite and senior leadership, Liu led the consumer-testing initiative to determine which campaign territories resonated most with target audiences, one that would ultimately shape the winning strategy.
Working under a three-day deadline, she architected and executed a nationwide Alchemer survey targeting at-risk atrial fibrillation patients, filtering participants through custom clinical screening logic she independently designed before analyzing emotional response, urgency, trust, and willingness to seek care. The survey narrowed five campaign concepts down to three final strategic pathways presented to Pfizer executive leadership.
Findings from the project helped the Publicis Groupe team ultimately win the business and secure Pfizer’s global creative business, a consolidation tied to roughly $1.41 billion in marketing billings. Senior leadership later cited the consumer-testing rigor as a key differentiator that set Publicis apart from competing agencies.
Making Medicine Feel Human
Pfizer’s recent campaigns weren’t built in isolation; they followed a deliberate narrative arc. “Here’s to Science” established Pfizer as a company rooted in human progress. “Knock Out” brought that mission into oncology with raw emotional force. “Every Breakthrough Matters” expanded it into a global conversation about what cancer care could look like. Liu contributed to the strategic foundation of all three: message architecture, consumer testing, qualitative research, and campaign planning across each initiative.
Another dimension of Liu’s work involved Pfizer’s biomarker education initiative, designed to help cancer patients understand how biomarker testing could identify more effective, personalized therapies. The challenge was two-fold: the information was complex and rarely presented in a way that patients could act on, and Liu had to develop a messaging strategy tailored to two fundamentally different audiences. Physicians required clinical precision, while patients needed clarity, reassurance, and a sense of agency. She conducted a series of qualitative interviews with both groups, synthesized the findings, and developed a dual-audience framework that preserved a unified strategic structure across both. Physicians received messaging grounded in clinical utility and treatment outcomes. Patients received clearer guidance centered on understanding testing, discussing options, and seeking care with greater confidence.
Agency strategists rarely become visible names outside conference rooms and campaign decks. Much of their influence stays buried inside research documents and planning meetings. Liu is an exception. Publicis leadership selected her to speak during Pfizer Intern Day at Publicis Groupe headquarters in New York, placing her alongside senior agency figures in conversations with the next generation of healthcare marketers, a signal of the standing she has built within an industry that doesn’t often surface the strategists behind the work. That kind of behind-the-scenes precision is what has set Liu apart.
Several years into her career, Liu has already shaped campaigns seen by more than 120 million Super Bowl viewers, influenced national conversations around oncology care, and helped push pharmaceutical advertising toward language that feels more human and accessible. One principle continues to guide nearly every project attached to her name: “Fear delays action,” she says. “The right message gives people a way out before panic takes over.”