General Application - USA

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 

It’s not just about the code — it’s about the culture.

A core capability within Weber Shandwick, Weber I/O partners with ambitious leaders to unlock the full power of tech, data and AI. Built for today’s complexity, we deliver solutions where intelligence, innovation and cultural fluency converge — unleashing real outcomes, with velocity.

Our AI Acceleration team translates innovation into actionable approaches, whether reimagining campaigns, reshaping reputation or redesigning workflows.

We’re seeking a seasoned leader to step into a newly-defined role at the Senior Vice President level in North America, working hand-in-hand with our EVP, Global AI Acceleration Lead. If you’re energized by complex client engagements, fluent in emerging technologies, and passionate about agency transformation, keep reading.

What you’ll do

• Serve as AI Acceleration Lead in North America. Lead initial client intake meetings and discovery sessions with a blend of strategic vision and technical understanding. Present AI capabilities clearly and confidently, guiding senior clients and agency leaders through opportunity framing, first-stage ideation and early solution scoping. Field preliminary technical questions about generative AI tools, proprietary platforms and AI service design with fluency and confidence.
• Bring structure to our agentic future. Own agentic workflow mapping and intelligent design interviews (IDIs), transforming service aspirations into actionable and repeatable frameworks. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to evaluate existing and future workflows, pinpoint automation opportunities, and map “agentic” paths to delivery. Convert insights from IDIs and internal stakeholder engagement into architecture-ready documentation and strategic narratives.
• Navigate the tech-product-agency triangle. Act as a strategic integrator between agency leadership, client teams, and our in-house AI and product development squads. Co-develop MVP specs and new service blueprints alongside tech teams—grounded in user insight, AI capability and operational viability. Help pressure-test product hypotheses and co-create narratives for go-to-market internal and external activation.
• Stay grounded in communications. Apply our PR/communications foundation and your experience to inform and evolve the storytelling, delivery models and activation strategies of our AI offerings. Support internal marketing of our offerings and pilots—ensuring they are positioned and understood across the agency ecosystem. Serve as a strategic thought partner in helping clients and teams understand not just “how” AI works, but why it matters and what to do about it.

You’ll thrive here if you

• Are immersed in emerging tech—its possibilities and implications—and can explain it in plain English.
• Are equal parts technologist, strategist and communicator—and can switch between them at speed.
• Have the confidence to lead high-stakes client interactions and the curiosity to dig deep into user needs, pain points and product gaps.
• Can “see the matrix” when it comes to how things work today—and imagine how they could work better with AI tomorrow.
• Enjoy converting ambiguity into structure and helping teams move from abstract conversation to concrete activation.

Must-have chops

• 12–15+ years of experience spanning communications/public relations, innovation, or digital transformation—with clear exposure to AI technologies.
• Strong grasp of Gen AI platforms, process mapping, and product ideation cycles.
• Comfort presenting to senior clients, fielding early-stage technical questions, and guiding discussions toward action.
• Proven experience navigating cross-functional environments, especially with technical and product development teams.
• Familiarity with intelligent agent design, agentic workflows, and/or service blueprints is highly desirable.
• Ability to communicate clearly in decks, meetings, and whiteboard sessions—making complex tech accessible to all levels.

Bonus points

• Experience launching AI-powered communications or marketing services.
• Track record of delivering structured innovation frameworks in a fast-paced agency or consultancy setting.
• Experience orchestrating integrated media strategies for consumer brand campaigns
• You can vibe code a prototype when inspiration strikes

Our team is future-leaning but grounded, legit curious and pragmatic. We celebrate makers and breakers. We ask hard questions, listen to everyone’s POV, make calls and move fast. And we love digging into nascent platforms and figuring out how best to put them to work. If that feels like your energy, let’s talk about how you can help accelerate the agency of the future!

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: $160,000 – $225,000

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-RJ1 

We are always looking for great talent!  If you don’t see an open role listed that interests you at this time, please send us your resume and we’ll keep in touch about future openings. 

Weber Shandwick is a leading global marketing and communications network that delivers next-generation solutions to brands, businesses and organizations in major markets around the world.

We push beyond category convention, pairing data-driven insights with creative prowess to deliver game-changing ideas that earn attention and drive business impact. We have a deep bench of talent across sectors and specialty areas, including brand and B2B marketing, healthcare marketing, change management, employee engagement, corporate reputation, crisis management, data and analytics, technology, public affairs, social impact and financial communications.

Led by world-class strategic and creative thinkers and activators, we have won some of the most prestigious awards in the industry. Weber Shandwick was named to Ad Age’s A-List in 2020 and Best Places to Work in 2019. The firm earned 25 Lions at the 2019 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

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