The Sunny Side of Branding: Emotion, Evidence, and Marketing That Works w/ Sunshine Makarow

With a name like Sunshine Makarow, you expect bright energy — and she absolutely delivers. Sunshine joins us to talk about marketing in a highly technical, highly regulated healthcare environment, where your audience includes everyone from infection prevention teams and procurement to department managers and end users. In this episode, Sunshine shares how she balances emotional connection with scientific proof, how her team makes trade shows actually worth it, and why measuring marketing is non-negotiable — especially when you’re building a brand that protects patients. In this conversation, you’ll hear: How to market to technical audiences by leading with emotion and backing it up with logic (“people buy on emotion and justify with logic”). Why personas matter more in healthcare—because infection prevention, procurement, biomed, and end users all need different messages. A smarter way to support sales inside hospitals, including trackable digital collateral (and why “donuts don’t work” in regulated environments). How to make trade shows pay off with pre-show promotion, follow-up systems, and a booth experience people actually remember. Why “we’ve always done it” is the most expensive strategy—and how to replace it with goal-first planning and measurable marketing.