Senior Manager, Media Strategy & Planning

Location: Cambridge, MA

About the role

The media landscape is evolving rapidly, creating new opportunities to connect strategy, data, and technology to more effectively reach patients/consumers and drive brand performance. Sanofi is making bold investments to be on the leading edge of this transformation through new market-leading capabilities.

Supporting this transformation, the Senior Manager, Media Strategy & Planning will serve as a strategic media lead for designated brands and/or therapeutic area(s), driving media strategy, planning, execution, optimization, and performance management across Consumer and/or HCP campaigns. This role will report to the Director, Media Strategy & Planning and partner closely with Consumer and HCP Media Strategy leads, Brand Marketing, Analytics, Omnichannel Enablement, Digital, Finance, and agency partners.

The ideal candidate is a strong media strategist with deep digital media experience, comfort working with performance data, and the ability to operate independently in brand-, GTMC- and agency-facing discussions. This role requires fluency in the evolving media landscape, including clean room-enabled activation, audience segmentation, omnichannel measurement, and AI-enabled media optimization.

This role offers the opportunity to help shape the future of media as Sanofi evolves toward a more internally owned, data-enabled, and performance-driven consumer marketing operating model. The Senior Manager will strengthen media strategy, improve optimization speed, build internal capability, and translate emerging data and measurement tools into measurable business impact.

Responsibilities

• Media Strategy, Planning & Business Partnership
  • Serve as media strategy lead for designated brand(s) and/or therapeutic area(s), acting as a trusted partner to Brand, Analytics, Omnichannel, Digital, and agency.
  • Translate brand objectives, audience priorities, business context, and media performance into strategic plans, tactical recommendations, and optimization opportunities.
  • Lead development of media planning inputs, including audience strategy, channel role, tactical requirements, media asset needs, and campaign priorities.
  • Develop clear recommendations and presentation materials to secure alignment on media plans, optimizations, and investment decisions.
  • Share learnings across indications to support consistent media strategy principles and portfolio-level improvement.
• Campaign Execution, Optimization & Performance
  • Oversee campaign execution across assigned channels and workstreams, ensuring media plans are delivered accurately and against established KPIs.
  • Partner with agency teams on launch readiness, trafficking/tagging needs, optimization timing, issue resolution, and campaign-level performance management.
  • Lead optimization discussions across audiences, channels, tactics, spend, sequencing, frequency, and performance outcomes.
  • Review dashboards, campaign reporting, and agency outputs to identify trends, diagnose performance drivers, and recommend action.
  • Partner with Analytics to strengthen measurement interpretation, performance storytelling, and closed-loop optimization.
• Consumer Marketing Capability Evolution
  • Support the Media team's evolving role in the consumer marketing operating model, including elevated business partnership and increased ownership of key capabilities.
  • Translate clean room-enabled audience and measurement capabilities into practical media activation and optimization approaches.
  • Partner with Digital, Analytics, and agencies to operationalize new data-enabled capabilities, including segmentation, activation, measurement, and reporting enhancements.
  • Contribute to media planning and performance forums by leading media inputs, identifying insights, interpreting implications, and driving follow-through.
• Budget, Agency & Operational Management
  • Manage media budgets for assigned workstreams, including pacing, investment tracking, PO/invoice/accrual support, and escalation.
  • Partner with Finance, Procurement, and agency teams to ensure budget documentation, billing reconciliation, and financial processes are accurate and timely.
  • Manage agency partners against defined scopes, deliverables, timelines, and performance expectations.
  • Maintain operating discipline across campaign documentation, decision tracking, reporting inputs, and cross-functional follow-through.
  • Help identify opportunities to streamline operational workflows and shift repeatable work to future hub, automation, agency, or operational excellence support models where appropriate.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in any field required.
• 7+ years of experience in media strategy, digital marketing, media planning, performance marketing, or related roles.
• Strong digital media experience across paid social, programmatic, online video, digital display, and/or other biddable/performance channels.
• Strong experience with Marketing Mix Models and other Measurement Partners.
• Solid understanding of media planning, activation, audience targeting, trafficking/tagging, and optimization.
• Comfort working with dashboards, campaign reporting, and performance data to develop insights and recommendations.
• Ability to translate complex media, data, and analytics inputs into clear business implications for brand and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Strong communication and influencing skills, including ability to lead discussions, challenge recommendations, and build alignment in a matrixed environment.
• Experience managing agency partners and coordinating across internal and external teams.
• Strong organizational skills, attention to detail, and ability to manage multiple workstreams, timelines, partners, financial details, and stakeholder needs.

Preferred Qualifications

• Pharmaceutical, biotech, healthcare, or other highly regulated industry experience.
• Experience working at or closely with a media agency strongly preferred.
• Experience supporting large-scale media budgets, including budget pacing, invoice reconciliation, accruals, or agency billing.
• Familiarity with clean room-enabled media activation, first- and third-party data, audience segmentation, CDPs/DMPs, omnichannel measurement, or privacy-safe marketing.
• Experience with Power BI, Tableau, Google Analytics, or similar reporting/dashboard tools.
• Experience with Consumer media; HCP media or non-personal promotion experience is a plus.
• Familiarity with AI-enabled media, automation, test-and-learn approaches, dynamic creative optimization, and emerging digital capabilities.
• Experience operating within a highly matrixed, multi-stakeholder environment.

Key Interactions

• Director, Media Strategy & Planning
• Consumer and HCP Media Strategy leads
• Brand Marketing teams
• GTMC Omnichannel, Analytics, Digital, Finance, and Procurement
• Media Agency of Record, creative agencies, platform partners, and external vendors

Benefits

• Discover endless opportunities to grow your talent and drive your career, whether it's through a promotion or lateral move, at home or internationally.
• Enjoy a thoughtful, well-crafted rewards package that recognizes your contribution and amplifies your impact.
• Take good care of yourself and your family, with a wide range of health and wellbeing benefits including high-quality healthcare, prevention and wellness programs, and at least 14 weeks' gender-neutral parental leave.
• Support a company that brings life-changing treatments to millions and is committed to doing right by patients, communities, and the planet.
• Drive progress by helping simplify, scale, and modernize how a global biopharma business delivers smarter, faster, and more sustainably.
• Support teams across science, medicine, and operations by building better systems, shaping bold strategies, and enabling innovation at speed.