Sup memelords,

Ever wonder what it’s like to be the person making memes for a $75M media company with millions of followers?

Me too, that’s why I invited the person who does exactly this to Memelord Magazine.

Liam Fennessy is the Social Media Editor and big game meme slugger behind the Morning Brew X account. It’s one of the best brand/meme accounts on the internet.

I’ve been following him for a while now because like me, he’s a baseball fanatic who post dank memes not only about baseball, but also the financial market, tech, and politics.

He got memes covered for every industry and occasions. That is quite insane.

His body of work is basically the embodiment of our thesis at Memelord: use memes to put your brand into the conversation about The Current Thing.

We talked about how to succeed with memes on X, the behind-the-scenes of Morning Brew memes, advice for marketers who wants to start posting memes for brand accounts, and his thoughts on memes in the sport industry.

Lots of tactical stuff here because our chat and bond is strengthened by the fact we both hate the Yankees. Let me know if you love it!

Jovian Gautama: I'll wear this Red Sox cap for you for this interview.

Liam Fennessy: Nice. I appreciate it. I've got my Liverpool hat on today.

So I just stalked your LinkedIn a little bit. You used to work for the Baltimore Orioles, but not even in marketing. How did you get from there to here making memes on social media?

It’s funny you ask. Well, when I was in college, I got my bachelor's in sport management. In high school and through college, the dream was to work in the front office for a sports team, primarily baseball.

Luckily, through people I knew and in the sport management program at Delaware, where I went, I landed an internship with the Orioles and basically event operations for I guess, five or six seasons, 

I'd go in for every home game and help oversee, like the event staff in the ballpark, so the people that scan your tickets show you to your seat

While I loved it, because I got to be at the ballpark every day, and Camden Yards in Baltimore is  one of the best ballparks in the league. It wasn't necessarily what I saw myself doing long term. Ultimately I decided to go back to what I love doing in high school, and that was kind of writing and having a creative outlet. 

So I decided to get my masters and strategic communication, did a two year program, and that ultimately lined up with my getting the job at Morning Brew as a social media editor through some more Delaware networking.

Why is it “Social Media Editor” and not “Social Media Manager”?

It was just kind of because I’m the one making sure the copy that's going up is clean and makes sense and lines up with what other outlets are sourcing. 

That's sort of the main task: making sure that—on my side, at least—the grammar is correct in tense, the writing's polished, or fits our voice. 

Our social team is sort of split in terms of, there's a social video side that handles our multimedia stuff, and then I myself am on the editorial side. So any of the headline Instagram graphics you see go up on our Instagram page, that's typically me, writing the headline, putting together the graphic, writing the copy..

Another major part of my day to day is—of course—writing tweets and making memes.

The main theme here is sort of keeping people updated as businesses sort of progresses, either in terms of a long term story unfolding or  just day to day market updates.

It's a lot of Twitter fingers, a lot of typing. 

When you joined Morning Brew was there already an internal social media guideline, or were you making it from scratch? 

When I joined, my biggest day to day task was X, and my manager, his name is Toby (Howell). He had been running the X account prior to me..

Oh yeah I’ve heard of Toby!

Yeah, so Toby has been a huge help in helping me learn the Morning Brew voice, and sort of teaching me what formats work, what formats don't. He's busy now helping run the Morning Brew Daily show as a host and other responsibilities.

So he basically left me with just a ton of information on the voice we're going for, the news we could hit, and the stuff we stay away from.

Is there anything that kind of surprised you when you learned all of these formats and how to engage?

So at least on X, it is such a fickle social platform…

Fickle is an understatement honestly 

(laughs) I agree. 

So It's incredibly fickle in terms of just the small details, like the formatting on X is such a huge part of it.

If I'm posting a meme, the way X crops images can absolutely make or break your posts, or if it’s a more text-based meme, the way you have your text formatted can make or break it.

But the app is also fun in a sense that you can put up as many shots as you want.

My day-to-day state of mind is: don't get so bogged down in thinking if a post is perfect. Because for X, it doesn't have to be. 

X is kind of a playground for us as a company. It’s where we can figure out things like: what news stories are working? What sort of jokes are landing? What formats are working? Can I carry some of that stuff over to Instagram? It's kind of like a melting pot where I can try out things like quote cards memes.

Today X is kinda become very video and image focused, but there is still the text heavy aspect of it, which I think lends itself to you can try so many different things in a single day.

I can try out different meme formats, and that’s awesome.

Memes have been Morning Brew’s modus operandi for a while now.

Not because their product is suitable for memes, but because they found out memes work well to grow their brand.

That’s also our thesis behind Memelord Technologies. Memes and entertaining content will make your brand memorable.

Liam also shared the behind the scenes of how he thinks about content creation. Read more to find out.

Can you say more about transferring ideas that work well on X to Instagram? How does the process work?

A lot of stories I might pick out for X are something that may have not been in our newsletter that goes out every morning yet.

If the post on X does well enough, I'll usually pass it off to one of my managers and say: “Hey, like, this did pretty well on X. Might be worth making something up and seeing if it translates to the Instagram audience.”

But there’s a challenge there too: The Instagram audiences are drastically different in terms of demographics. Something that might work well on X could actually flop on Instagram if I carried it over.

There's a lot of reps involved in terms of figuring out if a specific story might carry over well to Instagram.

If I try to get too in the weeds in terms of market news or Wall Street news, that will do really well on X, but usually won't translate as well to Instagram audience.

What’s funny is that what works for both audiences is usually things related to the food and beverage industry.

Our audience loves hearing like what some food and beverage company might be doing that's outside the box or or if they're running some strange promotion. That works really well for both platforms.

On X, we could cover everything, as long as it has a business angle. I could be writing a tweet about Taylor Swift one hour, and then the very next hour I'm writing about tariffs.

You have to be able to discern what story is the fit for each platform. A story can be a good story, but might not be a platform fit.

I'm still waiting for the Morning Brew and Red Sox crossover.

There's gonna be at some point.

Do you need to get approval for memes, especially for more sensitive topics?

There’s not a large approval process, but I would draft a tweet or make a meme and send it off to my supervisor and and they'd either double check the copy or ask me questions. Like, why do you think this will work? Why do you think this won't work?

Now it reached a point where there is a good amount of autonomy in terms of what I can tweet and what I can use. 

I'll still put my brand safety hat on every now and again and try to get a fresh pair of eyes on something just in case I might be going a little too far.

Do you need to have your Twitter fingers locked and loaded all the time?

Not always. We're not exactly in the business of minute by minute updates of market news or business news. 

A lot of what our audience comes to us for is an educated roundup of the stories of the day or ongoing stories.

The most minute-by-minute action I needed to do was back in April when Trump’s tariff saga was underway. That’s the most average hour coverage I've done on a particular story since I've been at Morning Brew, just because something was changing every hour.

I had to be able to trust myself and have the people above me trusting me to have the information that I needed, and be educated on what I was putting out there. 

Is there an internal team that feeds you the nuance and context of a story, and then you try to craft something out of it? Or do you just scroll X and then try to learn yourself?

It's a good mix of both at this point in time.

My own personal timeline is pretty curated enough where there's a good balance of baseball news and business news. I'll still see the the the information and the accounts from other people that we follow, and I’ll typically bookmark stuff that I think might be nice for our account.

Our newsletter team has a Slack channel that I'm in, and I'll follow that on a day to day basis as they put together the newsletter for the next day. I'll pick and choose stories from there. That's a huge reference for me. 

I'm also typically scouring CNBC, scouring Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, and all bigger outlets, and then there will be smaller ones like TechCrunch, The Verge, or Axios. There's a ton of scouring, there's a ton of reading that goes into it.

Then I have to decide: Well, I've just read this news article, is this worth drafting a post for? Is this relevant for our audience?

If there are three or four major news stories going on in a given day, I'll typically follow the X timeline and go through and figure out what are people actually focused on and talking about. What's the most interesting story to people today? 

That's what will sort of help lead me as I'm writing posts or making memes, that's the guiding principle.

I can still decide whether or not we want to go fully all in on coverage on this story on one day and say, write up five or six posts about it.

But generally, it’s better for us to follow those major outlets is insted of trying to write a post about a smaller story that we think our audience might like, but it might not necessarily resonate to a larger audience.

So social is for the big news that is happening, and other interesting business stories that’s kinda niche-ish, are saved for the newsletter.

Yes it’s kinda like that

Man, I don't even know if I can do your job.

Morning Brew’s X account now has 537K followers because of memes.

You can do it too. That’s why we’re building Memelord Technologies: to make it easier for you to grow with memes.

Liam also talked about how Morning Brew started posting memes. Keep reading to find out.

Do you have any target in terms of how many posts you gotta do per day? What if it’s a slow news day?

The process has sort of evolved since I've been at the company.

When I first started, we'd shoot for a tweet every 30 to 45 minutes between 8 to 6pm every day. We found out there just wasn't a great enough return on what we were putting out there. It could have been just like minor updates or things that weren't generating enough engagement to be really worthwhile.

The last three years have been pretty steady in terms of the quantity of posts per day. I have leeway to rip 20 to 25 tweets a day if it’s a busy news day.

If there's not that much happening, I’d try to just pick a couple stories or craft a couple memes that I think are going to be winners on a certain day, and maybe that's only three or five posts. So the volume can really vary just depending on the landscape.

There are events on the calendar that I can circle and get ready for. A good example is NVIDIA earnings report. That's a huge day on my calendar every three months.

I’ll mark it because that's where our audience is gonna be. That's what they're watching. I’m locked in for that, and I’m ready to rip a ton of tweets and a two hour time frame. 

Another example is if it’s a recurring annual even. Apple product event is a big day for us in Morning Brew. I'll usually look back at previous Apple product launches and Apple memes, and I start thinking if there are any meme formats I can recycle. That's a great toolbox to have.

But back to your question, I would say on average, it's probably eight, eight to 10 tweets a day.

This is a mix of memes and serious stuff?

Yeah, absolutely. On the Instagram side too. I'll put together essentially three posts in a day.

We'll usually have four static Instagram posts go out each day, but those can vary now too. We have a bunch of different formats depending on the content. If there's a big stat we want to hit, we've got a format for big numbers.

We also have other formats like quote cards or headlines. So I can play around over on Instagram too, and have a couple different roads I want to go down depending on the story.

I feel like Morning Brew is the earliest media that actually embraces meme marketing. It's kind of the best way to promote your product, because it puts the brand in the conversation, and it’s entertaining.

That's kind of like our thesis too at Memelord. If Morning Brew’s social is solely about data journalism, they probably won’t have as many audience.

Did Morning Brew already use memes when you joined?

When I started, the social team itself was open to using memes. But I also think at the same time, X hadn't fully evolved yet to the point where nearly every post you see now has an image attached. 

So right prior, prior to me coming on—I actually looked back at the old tweets—so much of it is strictly text.

I happened to just have an absurd amount of reaction images and memes in my camera roll on my phone, and as I've sort of gotten more freedom in terms of what I can use I have the freedom to experiment with memes. Like I said, because it's X, we're so open to trying anything on that platform. If it doesn’t hit, we just keep moving.

From there's as more time has passed, I think I know which memes resonate and which ones don't with our audience.

Sometimes there might be a meme that' way too obscure for our general audience. I might, I might think it's hilarious, but then our audience would be like “Hmm I don’t get this”

Were there a specific point in time where the team decides “Okay we gotta post more memes”? Did you have to sell it to the team?

The first six months I was here, it was sort of me learning the ropes, crafting the voice, and understanding the Morning Brew voice.

After that, I realized I can offer way more than what I'm currently doing by bringing stuff from my personal account which is super meme heavy.

I think was a huge shift because it allowed me to have more freedom. I think that sort of really opened up our X strategy over the last two plus years or so.

There was a certain point where things were sort of getting bogged down, and we were like, well, what, what do we actually want the X account to be?

Once we sort of have that idea that “Oh we are not necessarily a vehicle for minute to minute updates, or hour by hour updates on the new as things are unfolding.”

It's more a vehicle for rounding up stories relevant for our audience and then packaging them in a way—whether it's in a meme or whether it's in like a text roundup—that both entertains and informs the audience, and doesn't necessarily have to be super in the weeds.

We want the business news to be accessible for everyone, and memes are a huge part of that. You don't necessarily have to understand all the ins and outs of tariffs, but you'll certainly understand a heat map with a Seinfeld meme attached to it.

And people will say: “Okay, actually, I understand what's happening here now.”

In that sense, the image based memes have been super helpful.

Do you personally have any kind of thought process when you're making memes? Basically if someone asks you “hey can you teach me how to meme?” what will you tell them?

A lot of it is just, for better or worse, a massive amount of time spent on seeing how other people approach memes and consuming media.

It’s all about remixing. Can I make a pop culture reference and bring it over to a news about Microsoft Copilot for example?

Another example is, when Internet Explorer was being shut down. I made a Toy Story “so long, partner” meme about it.

It’s just little things like that. I always think “Can I find something that has relevance to a larger audience and attach this business news, so people will understand the larger sentiment behind it?”

That’s essentially why Morning Brew was founded. Our two founders Austin (Rief) and Alex (Lieberman) wanted to make business news interesting for kids in college, and make it accessible for that type of audience.

I saw your hilarious meme about the Taco Bell AI drive through mixed with the “I Think You Should Leave” reference. I don't think everyone will get that, but a large number of people will. It’s niche enough that some people will feel special that they got the reference.

That's a huge part of reaching people too. They want to feel like they understand the subject matter, understand the meme.

This sounds cliche, but like it does give you a sense of a community online where, okay, they're making jokes that I understand, that the average people might not get.

There's so many brands on X trying to reach a larger audience, but if you're doing it from a sense of always pushing a product, or the copy is more formal, I don't think that approach works on X, regardless of what kind of business you're running.

I forget who said it, but it always stuck with me: X is where brands come to act like people, whereas Instagram is where people go to act like brands. 

If you're running a brand account, you want to come across as there's a real human behind this account. They watch Netflix day to day, or they've seen Pixar movies and following the same news stories you are.

We have 4 million newsletter subscribers who might not be following us on social. We might not necessarily be pushing them to the newsletter.

We don’t typically try to push it that hard, because we hope that the connection we build with them through Instagram or through X kind of organically gets them to consume more of our content.

Let's say if a marketer or social media manager want to start using memes for their brand voice. Do you have any advice? 

It sounds insane, but sadly, it's spending a lot of time reading and seeing what other people are doing in your in your immediate circle.

Our niche is business news, so I'm going to go around and find people that are trying to cover the same sort of news in a funny and informative way, and take inspiration from that.

We've sort of developed our own voice and have our own wheelhouse. A portfolio of memes, if you will, from the Morning Brew account.

There are other accounts out there where they're doing something unique or interesting and will sort of help me look at my own work and sort of think about things differently. Maybe I can take this format or this general template and apply it to another story down the road. 

I'll never forget my first week in the company, I had a call with our co-founder Austin (Editor’s note: Austin Rief is an investor in Memelord.), and he gave me a list of accounts to check out. He said “Go check them out, they're great, you'll learn a lot from them.”

It gave me a great sort of first step in terms of the informative angle we're going for, but also some references on how other accounts are doing things in a funny way.

So I think the biggest thing is—sadly—to get your screen time up. 

Like I previously said, X is super fickle. I you use a meme slightly wrong, that could make or break the whole post.

Understanding those nuances takes time. From there you’ll gradually come up ideas, memes or funny ways to frame your product or your content itself. 

A lot of it just about having the courage to put stuff out there, even if it's not perfect. That's what I try to tell myself day to day. 

Especially on X, it doesn't have to be perfect. If there's not a lot of news going on, the focus is just making sure we have a presence and making sure people see us on the timeline.

Sometimes I’ll just make general, evergreen memes or content that we already know resonate with our audience or if there’s a trending video that's going around.

Something I've been thinking about is sports marketing and memes.

There are tons of sports teams today that are embracing memes, especially minor league baseball teams. Teams like the Trash Pandas and Portland Pickles are literally memelords.

I'm curious on your thought about this. You’re a huge baseball fan and actually worked at a baseball franchise before.  Why do you think sport teams lean into memes quite hard right now in their marketing?

For minor league teams and lower level soccer teams, it's certainly a great way for them to just create a presence to begin with.

Let’s say I’m not your typical baseball fan, but I see a post from, say, a Mets minor league affiliate. I don’t recognize the team, but the meme is funny, or it’s paired with a funny highlight video.

That’s a great way to reach a wider audience, especially for teams that are usually hyper local.

Having the freedom to create memes or make jokes about the sport or their own team is a great way to endear yourself to people beyond the immediate audience. 

Sports marketing and sports journalism in general have been treated themselves so seriously for years. I think you've seen in the last 10 to 15 years, it's really opened up.

People have really lightened up to the idea that, especially minor league sports, it's supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be engaging. Minor league sports are family friendly. Bring your kids out.

It doesn’t only apply to low level sports too, because I see so much of it on Tiktok now. Juventus (Italian football/soccer club) is insane on Tiktok, same with AC Milan.

These are prestige names. Billion dollar international brands, and they’re dropping brainrot on the timeline.

I am curious and just gotta know: how do you get approval when you're that big?

I completely understand how the smaller sports teams are doing it. There’s certainly not that many cooks in the kitchen in terms of approval processes and whatnot, because those front offices are extremely tiny.

They have the freedom to sort of play around. If something flops, your minor league account probably only have 1000s of followers. It’s not the end of the world if you try to make a joke and it doesn’t land.

But if you’re a billion dollar franchise, you gotta really be sure you're tapped in and this is gonna resonate with people. 

I think the team that really kicked off TikTok memes was the Buffalo Bills. Their account is great and so funny. That was sort of like where I started seeing larger sports teams, also doing it. 

I think NBA teams are now very heavy on memes too.

I don't know if you remember around 10 years ago, whoever was running the Rockets account was out of their mind.

It was the only place where we were seeing strange stuff from a professional like sports X account. Now it’s more common.

There was one particular post where they beat the Mavs in a game, and they straight up just posted, the horse emoji with the gun emoji—which wasn't the water gun at the time—and they got in hot water over it.

That's the first time I can remember a sports team social actually acting as if they were a fan.

Yeah sports marketing and memes is something that I'm really curious about, and might write more about soon.

Dude thank you for today, and it’s so nice talking to you. Hope you can come to Taiwan so we can catch a baseball game.

Thank you dude! Really appreciate you wanting to chat, I’m down to talk Sox or memes again anytime you want

That was my talk with Morning Brew’s Liam Fennessy.

He’s literally one of the most prolific memelord on X.

You can follow Liam for baseball memes or just follow his work at Morning Brew.

If you like this piece, I’d love to hear from you! Follow me @jovvvian or hit me up on LinkedIn if you’re nasty.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jovian “The Child Labor” Gautama

VP of Memes at Memelord.com