Welcome to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence.

On today’s episode, Sara Payne sits down with Emily Hansen, Senior Director of the Resensation program at Axogen, to discuss how healthcare brands can leverage thought leadership to reshape public perceptions, influence behavior change, and ultimately become architects of a health revolution.

As a specialist in advocacy and education, Emily champions awareness about a lesser-known but highly prevalent outcome of breast cancer surgery: chronic numbness following a mastectomy. Through her work at Axogen, she’s spearheading a movement to empower breast cancer patients and their care teams with knowledge and solutions that can dramatically enhance quality of life beyond survival—focusing on nerve repair and the pioneering Resensation procedure.

In this thought-provoking conversation, Sara and Emily explore the intersection of marketing, education, and advocacy. They dive into the challenges of raising awareness about health issues shrouded by misconceptions, the vital role of patient advocates, and how moving beyond short-term wins toward long-term health movements is key to redefining standards of care. You'll hear about real strategies for engaging the survivor community, addressing clinician knowledge gaps, and the ongoing effort to translate awareness into tangible business and health outcomes.

Thank you for being part of the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. The future of healthcare depends on it.

Key Takeaways:

Marketing as a Catalyst for Health Movements:

Emily illustrates how powerful marketing can spark a health movement—even for issues that have been historically overlooked. By focusing efforts on educating both patients and clinicians about post-mastectomy numbness and offering actionable solutions, the Resensation program exemplifies marketing’s role in not just awareness, but wholesale perception change within healthcare.

Stakeholder-Centric Communication:

Reaching both patients and providers requires tailored messaging and a multi-pronged approach. Emily explains that effective campaigns must bridge awareness gaps in diverse audiences, from general consumers and advocacy groups to the full spectrum of clinicians. The Resensation team balances highly technical provider information with relatable patient stories to ensure relevance and clarity across all touchpoints.

The Power (and Sensitivity) of Patient Advocacy:

Patient advocates are not mere influencers; they are individuals with lived experiences and deep personal investment. Emily shares how collaborating authentically with survivor communities—such as The Breasties—can accelerate education and trust. She emphasizes the importance of letting advocates’ voices lead and prioritizing the issue above the brand to build an enduring movement.

Long-Term Commitment Over Short-Term Wins:

Creating lasting change in public and professional awareness isn’t achieved through one-off major media hits. Instead, it demands continuous investment, evolving narratives, and relationship-building across years. Emily underscores that consistent, layered outreach (PR, education, advocacy partnerships, and digital content) is essential for sustaining momentum and meeting both patient and business objectives.

Measuring Impact: Business and Behavioral Outcomes:

The Resensation campaign’s success isn’t just marked by media impressions, but by tangible growth in web traffic, patient referrals, and most compellingly, provider demand for training. Emily discusses the importance of presenting both quantitative metrics and qualitative anecdotes to executive leaders as evidence of progress, and how adapting data models helps demonstrate true business value over time.

For more information about the Resensation program, including educational resources and a surgeon locator, visit resensation.com. And if you’re inspired by the mission to create lasting improvements in healthcare, don’t forget to subscribe to the Health Marketing Collective—because the future of healthcare depends on it.

Welcome to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence.

In today’s episode, Sara Payne is unpacking the real power—and challenge—of emotional storytelling in health marketing. Joined by Lindsey Wehking, Chief Investigative Strategy Officer at Nonfiction Research, their conversation dives deep into why most healthcare brands only scratch the surface when it comes to understanding their audience, and what it really takes to access the raw, honest emotional truths that resonate and drive behavioral change.

Lindsey brings a wealth of experience leading immersive research projects that have inspired everything from new products to major media coverage and even new company divisions. Her team is known for uncovering lived realities in places most research never ventures: hospital bedsides, prisons, and subcultures across America. Together, Sarah and Lindsey challenge today’s marketers to move past the clichés and limitations of “safe” storytelling and to courageously commit to connecting at a more vulnerable, human level.

This episode explores both the philosophy and practical techniques of immersive research and emotional realism. Sarah and Lindsey discuss how brands can navigate workplace culture barriers, use ethnographic methods to build intimacy, and shift from universal-but-bland messages to powerful, specific truths that genuinely reflect their audience’s lives. They share moving real-world examples—from fathers navigating shame and engagement, to women coping with sensation loss after mastectomy—and examine how these insights translate into marketing that drives impact.

Thank you for being part of the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. The future of healthcare depends on it.

Key Takeaways:

1. Emotional Storytelling Demands Courage and Commitment: True emotional storytelling requires brands to move beyond lip service and commit to revealing the messy, uncomfortable truths that define real human experience. Lindsey stresses that while many marketers talk about going deep, few are willing to break from professional norms and workplace safety to actually do so. Emotional realism doesn’t mean being dark or depressing—but it does mean daring to ask, witness, and reflect the truths that make audiences feel truly seen.
2. Immersive Research Uncovers Diary-Level Insights: Traditional market research often falls short because it relies on contrived environments—focus groups, phone interviews, scripted questions—where people rarely reveal their authentic selves. Nonfiction’s immersive research, by contrast, seeks out “diary-level” insights by engaging with people directly in their environments, observing real experiences, and listening for confessions and contradictions. This approach provides unmatched depth, surfacing the complex emotions and idiosyncrasies that make people human.
3. Specificity Drives Universal Resonance: A common marketing pitfall is trying to appeal to everyone with generic, “universal” messages. Lindsey argues that the opposite is true: It’s only through deeply specific, nuanced stories that audiences can find themselves and connect on a meaningful level. Great advertising, like great literature, makes the universal accessible by starting with the particular—making even uncommon stories relatable.
4. Mixing Quantitative and Qualitative for Maximum Impact: While immersive qualitative research delivers powerful, intimate insights, quantitative data is essential for validating those experiences at scale. Lindsey shares how Nonfiction’s research for Axogen on post-mastectomy sensation loss combined real-world qualitative insights with large-scale quantitative surveys—resulting in compelling, statistically grounded storytelling that changed the conversation and enabled new marketing approaches.
5. Emotional Realism in Action: From Fathers to Motherhood: The episode highlights multiple brand examples where emotional realism transforms campaigns. From research that revealed shame, not ignorance, kept fathers from engaging with their children, to candid ads by brands like Frida and Nike that moved beyond clichés to confront real, often unspoken experiences faced by women—these stories demonstrate that audiences crave, and reward, brands that are brave enough to reflect their true struggles and victories.

For listeners eager to see emotional realism in action, a link to Axogen’s research will be available soon! 

In the meantime, take Lindsey’s advice: Get curious, grant yourself permission, and start having real conversations that go far beyond the surface. Whether you commission immersive research or champion new storytelling within your own team, remember that the most powerful marketing starts with the courage to get real.

Thank you for listening to the Health Marketing Collective. Be sure to subscribe and join us again as we explore the strategies and stories that are shaping the future of healthcare marketing.

Welcome to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence.

On today’s episode, we’re joined once again by Melissa Fors Shackelford, health marketing strategist, accomplished consultant, renowned keynote speaker, and now Amazon’s #1 bestselling author with her new book, “Harnessing Purpose: A Marketer’s Guide to Inspiring Connection.” Host Sara Payne leads a deep-dive conversation into the essential role of purpose in marketing, exploring how both personal and brand purpose are at the very heart of meaningful work and, crucially, business success.

Melissa draws on two decades of shaping brand and growth strategies for healthcare organizations, including Optum, Hazelden Betty Ford, and Cigna’s Evernorth, to share why connecting our personal “why” with the organizational mission isn’t just aspirational, but also practical, powerful, and profitable. Together, Sara and Melissa unpack the realities of burnout and the so-called “soul-selling” reputation that sometimes haunts the marketing profession, contrasting it with Melissa’s own purpose-driven approach. The episode explores how leaders and organizations can avoid performative platitudes, instead cultivating authentic, values-aligned cultures that foster engagement, resilience, creativity, and tangible business outcomes.

Whether you’re feeling disconnected from the “why” of your day-to-day or are a marketing leader looking to inspire deeper commitment within your team, today’s discussion is packed with actionable guidance, real-world examples, and candid advice on harnessing purpose for both individual fulfillment and organizational growth.

Key Takeaways:

1. Aligning Personal and Brand Purpose Unlocks Engagement and Performance: Melissa emphasizes that the most effective marketing and the most fulfillment for marketers happens when personal purpose aligns with brand values. Marketers who understand both their own “why” and their organization’s mission are more resilient, creative, and motivated, producing authentic campaigns that resonate internally and externally.
2. Purpose-Driven Companies Outperform Competitors: The episode isn’t just about feel-good motivation Melissa cites research (from the likes of HBR and Deloitte) that shows 85% of businesses with a clear purpose see sales increase, while 42% without purpose see stagnation or decline. Purpose-driven organizations attract like-minded employees and customers, resulting in higher engagement, loyalty, and performance.
3. Authenticity and Consistency Are Essential to Building Trust: Saying the right things isn’t enough; posting values on lanyards or walls without truly living them can actively erode employee and consumer trust. Melissa and Sara discuss why it’s critical for leadership to model values and use them as a filter for decisions from hiring to service delivery, especially in high-stakes sectors like healthcare.
4. Purpose as a Decision-Making Filter Empowers Employees: The ultimate goal is for every employee to use company purpose and values as a guide in daily and “in the moment” decisions, especially when leaders aren’t around. This means purpose isn’t just strategy, it's culture, empowering staff with clarity and confidence, and fueling both psychological safety and creative risk-taking.
5. Marketing Can and Should Be a Force for Good: Melissa challenges marketing’s manipulative stereotype by sharing real healthcare examples where marketing ethics and mission-driven approaches protect vulnerable populations and foster positive change. She encourages all marketers to use their role for good, highlighting the growing importance of authenticity in both B2C and B2B environments.

To connect with Melissa Fors Shackelford or learn more about her bestselling book, visit harnessingpurpose.com or reach out on LinkedIn.

If you found today’s conversation inspiring, be sure to subscribe to the Health Marketing Collective wherever you listen. Thank you for being part of our community, where strong leadership and marketing excellence intersect, because the future of healthcare depends on it.

About Melissa Fors Shackelford

Melissa Fors Shackelford is a healthcare marketing strategist, consultant, and keynote speaker. She is the founder of Shackelford Strategies, where she helps executives and emerging businesses build brands, enter new markets, and grow with purpose. A former healthcare marketing executive at Optum, Hazelden Betty Ford, and Cigna’s Evernorth, Melissa brings more than 20 years of experience to her work. She is also the author of the Amazon #1 best seller Harnessing Purpose: A Marketer’s Guide to Inspiring Connection, and a frequent keynote speaker on topics including purpose-driven marketing, inclusive communications, and healthcare branding.

Welcome back to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence.

In today’s episode, host Sara Payne sits down with Gino Giovannelli—digital marketing strategist, educator, and founder of Miles Interactive—to discuss a concept that doesn’t get enough credit in modern marketing: the power of saying no. Drawing on his vast experience with brands such as Caribou Coffee, Lifetime Fitness, and even the Super Bowl Host Committee, Gino unpacks why essentialism—doing fewer things, but better—stands at the heart of smart, sustainable marketing strategy.

Gino, who also serves as a professor at the University of St. Thomas and hosts the podcast In the Key of D, brings a fresh, liberating perspective on how marketers can reclaim focus, avoid digital overwhelm, and create more impact by prioritizing what truly matters. Together, Sara and Gino dive into what it means for marketing leaders to show restraint, how to strategically select the right digital channels, and why letting go of the “more is better” mentality can propel organizations (and their teams) further.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone feeling stretched too thin or uncertain about how to cut through today’s digital chaos. Whether you’re a CMO, a marketing manager, or someone seeking to make marketing more meaningful and manageable, Sara and Gino provide both the “why” and the “how” for ruthless prioritization in the digital age.

Thank you for joining the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. Because the future of healthcare depends on it.

Key Takeaways

1. Saying “No” Is Essential to Strategic Marketing Success: Gino champions the philosophy of essentialism, urging marketers to do fewer things—but with much more intention and excellence. Rather than reflexively saying “yes” to every opportunity or channel, success often comes from confidently (and respectfully) saying “no” to good ideas so you have room to say an enthusiastic “hell yes” to the right ones. This discipline frees up resources and attention for what truly drives the business forward.
2. Let Business Goals Lead Channel Selection: Marketers often feel pressured to appear everywhere—SEO, SEM, email, social, display, content—but Gino explains why most organizations lack the resources (and sometimes the skills) to execute across all six major digital channels effectively. Instead, he recommends letting business objectives—in particular, whether your greatest need is acquisition or retention—determine which channels you prioritize. For example, a startup should invest in acquisition-focused channels, while an established retention-focused business can double down on email and social.
3. Break Out of Habit—Strategy Is About What You Should Do, Not Just What You Could Do: Much of what marketing teams do daily is based on habit rather than strategic necessity. Gino suggests taking a periodic step back to audit activities, questioning which ones genuinely serve current business priorities. Developing a digital marketing strategy means making tough choices—prioritizing high-impact, low-burden opportunities, and relentlessly cutting busywork and legacy activities that offer little value. As Gino puts it, “the difference between could do and should do is simply ‘no’.”
4. Apply a Proven Framework for Channel Prioritization: Gino shares his five-step methodology used in both his consulting and university teaching. This framework transforms overwhelming possibilities into a sharp, actionable plan—ensuring resources are channeled where they have the most leverage.
5. Evolve With the Changing Digital Landscape—And Use Advanced Tools Wisely: The digital ecosystem is increasingly blurry and interconnected; channels now blend and overlap, making it harder to determine what’s driving results. Gino advises marketers to remain agile, avoid falling in love with legacy “hero channels,” and continually seek out fresh tactics—such as custom and lookalike audiences on social platforms or leveraging over-the-top (OTT) streaming TV for hyper-targeted reach. Staying current, experimenting hands-on, and adapting quickly is key to long-term relevance.

Welcome to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence.

On today’s episode, Sara Payne sits down with Mark Fligge to dive deep into one of the most powerful, and sometimes underleveraged, events in the medtech commercial calendar: the National Sales Meeting (NSM). Mark, President and Chief Marketing Officer at Intraworks, a B2B agency specializing in go-to-market strategy for medtech, brings decades of experience from both agency and client-side leadership roles to this insightful discussion. The episode is laser-focused on one mission: moving your National Sales Meeting from just another check-the-box event, to a key growth accelerator that inspires, aligns, and equips your sales force for real business momentum.

Sara and Mark begin by reframing the National Sales Meeting as the single largest internal stage most companies have—a crucial opportunity for marketing to fuel not only sales-force enthusiasm, but also strategic clarity and business acceleration. They explore what true cross-functional alignment between marketing and sales should look like, and how to bridge the gaps when collaboration is lacking or legacy cultures have kept marketing at arm’s length.

Mark shares practical strategies for getting a “seat at the table” and building a theme and story arc that actually resonate with the organization’s real-world challenges and strategic goals—not just another fun slogan or catchy soundtrack. The conversation hinges on the importance of genuine discovery, grounded storytelling, and making hard choices about focus and content to avoid overwhelming (and under-inspiring) your audience.

The episode also explores the evolving cadence of sales meetings, asking if an annual event is always necessary—or if more event-based, purpose-driven approaches might be more impactful. Finally, Sara and Mark detail the importance of celebration, inspiration, and post-meeting follow-through, ensuring that alignment and energy last well beyond the closing keynote.

Thank you for being part of the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. The future of healthcare depends on it.

Key Takeaways:

1. National Sales Meetings Are the Biggest Internal Stage—Don’t Just “Check the Box”: Too often, NSMs are rushed and treated as another deliverable. Mark emphasizes that these meetings are high-stakes, high-impact events where marketing should play a leading role alongside sales—using the moment to bring the year’s strategic plan to life, inspire the team, and create shared direction across the commercial organization.
2. True Sales–Marketing Alignment Starts Early and Runs Deep: Great alignment is built long before the meeting begins—it’s relational, not transactional. Mark urges marketing leaders to reach out to sales leadership months in advance, co-own the agenda, and approach the event as collaborative leaders, not just content providers. This means proactively making the case to participate in or co-lead planning, especially in organizations where marketing hasn’t historically had a seat at the table.
3. Discovery and Theming: Ground the Meeting in Real-World Challenges: The most resonant meeting themes and story arcs emerge from structured “discovery”—deeply understanding the sales force’s realities, obstacles, and customer dynamics. Mark warns against themes that sound good but lack relevance, and advises marketers to anchor the agenda in what truly matters to the team—whether it’s competitive threats, market shifts, or upcoming launches.
4. Focus Is Critical—Less Is More When It Comes to Agenda and Content: Information overload is the enemy of inspiration and alignment. Rather than covering every update or initiative, Sara and Mark advise marketing leaders to make tough choices, focusing on the few most critical levers that will drive results in the coming year. Other topics can be addressed through targeted follow-ups—ensuring the NSM delivers clarity, not confusion.
5. Lasting Impact Depends on Celebration, Positivity, and Follow-Through: The best NSMs inspire not just by informing, but by celebrating performance, building positivity, and leaving the sales force feeling seen, equipped, and confident in leadership. Mark also calls out the growing shift toward event-based (rather than strictly annual) meetings, where celebration and strategic work may be separated for greater impact. Finally, post-event follow-up is key: the themes, deliverables, and promises made in the meeting must be sustained through quarterly check-ins and the consistent delivery of new tools and resources.

For listeners responsible for shaping the commercial engine of health and medtech companies, this episode offers a masterclass in elevating internal events from obligatory gatherings to true engines of growth, cohesion, and inspiration.

If you found today’s conversation valuable, please subscribe to the Health Marketing Collective wherever you get your podcasts—and remember, the future of healthcare depends on it.

JC likes to think he follows in his mother's footsteps as a professional homemaker holding space for others as a nationally renowned teacher of movement and mindset, community engager and social movement trailblazer, storyteller and musical theatre director. Born and raised in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, JC entered the world as a highly emotional, unathletic child with little interest in competition. Through trials and tribulations, mile runs and middle school gym classes, JC started to question the rationale behind our culture's use of physical experiences that leave most feeling less than enough.

JC earned a BA in Theology and Master's Degree in Leadership, is a 1 Giant Mind Certified Meditation facilitator and holds credentials across many modalities of movement. The founder of 5K Everyday Conversations, a social movement designed to create access for all to daily conversation with strangers & TCO Local, monthly all are needed, all are capable connection events, JC is passionate about redesigning the fitness landscape in the United States to where the target audience is: everyone.

As a brand ambassador and consistent positive friction voice, JC has worked alongside brands like lululemon, CorePower Yoga, [solidcore], Orangetheory Fitness, allbirds and Fitbit to ensure they continuously explore ways they can shift the exclusionary and shame-inducing realities of the wellness industry to a more sustainable, happiness and health-giving part of our culture and economy. Over the past 3 years, JC has been a part of an inspiring team of people conducting, presenting and publishing the first comprehensive research on Food, Body & Fitness Shaming.

Alongside his work in fitness, JC is a full time Leadership and Change consultant working alongside Fortune 500 companies, non-profits, civic and educational communities. JC serves as the Chair of the Advisory Board of Cadre, the all-in-one mental health and wellness platform that brings content and community together. Lastly, JC is the Artistic Director of Alive & Kickin, the Premier Senior Rock Ensemble, a non-profit that uses rock music to bust down the misperceptions on getting old and the power of creativity in the aging journey. You can often find JC on the Twin Cities' ABC syndicate, KSTP-TV as their wellness expert. JC leads workshops and is writing the seminal text on his concept of Enoughness, the empowering practice of affirming that you are already, indeed enough.

www.jclippold.com