Meet MM+M’s new editor-in-chief

Hey, it’s Mark as most of our readers have no doubt heard. Mmm has a new editor-in-chief veteran journalist. Jameson Fleming has taken the editorial reins of the brand. Jameson is fresh off and eight and a half year stint at the well-known B2B brand adweek during which he held roles of increasing responsibility culminating and executive editor had one time. He led The Newsroom of some 30 reporters editors and artists. He’s also written for CBS Sports and Bleacher Report while it had weak Jameson took a particular interest in the agency beat including the structural problems of the industry talent and inclusion areas, which will certainly come in handy. And in order to properly introduce the new EIC to our audience Jameson joins us as this week’s guest for an extra long segments. So is Jameson gets underway at the top of the mass Ted will find out more about his background how his first week has been and his plans for the branch.

A Marcus with her at large and welcome to the M&M podcast medical marketing media showed at Healthcare marketing RIT large.

Jameson welcome to the imminent podcast. Thank you for having me excited to do it. Absolutely. You’ve been here all of a week’s time and we’re already putting you in the hot seat. So apologies for that all good. I mean we discussed doing it last week on my first day. So at least at least I got a week to figure some things out before doing this we gave you a buffer not a completely honest. So I just kind of start off by, you know, giving our audience a brief introduction of of your background and you know how your first week’s been. Yeah. Sure. So I come to M&M from adweek. As you said I held seven different roles in eight years there. I basically did everything you could possibly do in a newsroom except do art and images and that allowed me to kind of work across the company and give me a really interesting perspective on how Publications are run and it allowed me to really understand, you know, the audience side of a

And so through that perspective kind of really shaped my final three or four years. It had weak when I took over the agency’s be eventually agencies and Brands and then agencies Brands and creative. There was always a pursuit of what is our audience actually want as opposed to what do we think we should cover and so that’s how I always function there and it carried me pretty well. And and so I’ve really grown to have some very audience first views and that’s something I’ll eventually figure out here is what is the audience really want how much of it are we already doing which I think is pretty high already based off of what I’ve seen and so yeah. I’m excited to get going.

A sort of fundamentally, you know the what a media brand does is bring audience, right? So it’s really, you know, cool to hear that you’re you know background Blends the journalism with us or the emphasis on understanding what an audience wants because you know, that’s the lifeblood of any media brand is making sure that you’re giving them the kind of content that’s going to bring the audience which then leads to all kinds of other good things like, you know, advertisements and and traffic and all things like that. Yeah. Exactly. And I mean for me it started early I had CBS Sports. I was one of the first two social editors that CBS sports.com had ever brought on and so, you know, my first job out of school was figure out like what do we share on Twitter and Facebook and Google Plus for anybody who remembers Google Plus that was something we figured out and Pinterest and you know, so it was from day one of my career. It was constantly. What is the audience want? How do you give it to him? And

That’s what I’m excited about here because I think there’s so many opportunities to provide really interesting stories to such an important audience. You know, I was we always used to joke at adweek like we’re not saving lives and we’re not necessarily saving lives at M&M. But if you help people in this industry do their jobs better, they may actually save a life. And so the importance of what we do here is is you know so much higher than what we did at week not to diminish that because it was very important publication still is always will be but you know, it’s it’s there’s a certain degree of importance that we have here that I think is really neat as a journalist. Yeah, when one of the question before I hand it off to my colleague so that I know Jack unless you have some questions for you as well. But at week you from time to time you did Cover the farming industry, you know from a marketing from an advertising perspective, you know, whether was from the

Personnel that that pharmacies would bring in on the commercial side or a different ad campaigns that stood out how would you can I characterize that coverage? You know, what was your approach to covering farmers will marketing there? Yeah for us. It was largely about the CMOS.

That would come in, you know add week at a very heavy CMO Focus for a while. And so we look at the impacts that those markers were having we would occasionally cover the healthcare side of the agency seen it wasn’t huge for us, but we would occasionally kind of go into Trend stories and you know, my understanding was often the larger agency networks had health agencies. Typically we’re outperforming the rest of the creative shop. And so if they had a healthy healthy Pharma agency or Healthcare agency, you know, really helped prop up the rest of the agency and you see that with a few of the very large Network shops of having very strong Healthcare chops, really improve, you know, the overall bottom line for those agencies. That’s a really good point the last couple of years we’ve seen that right kind of the healthcare shop of the of the bigger net worth kind of booing the rest of

The network and that is the network model, right use kind of share revenues and it was interesting to see how it kind of carrying its siblings that way absolutely if I can hop in there. I’d like to ask a question kind of going back to your to your background Jameson for a second you talked about the fact that like when you came in social media obviously was such a different beast in terms of like what even looked like what it was called the fact that it was Twitter and now it’s X and we have all these different the phasing out of Google Plus is supposed to maybe the instruction of tiktok. I’m curious from your perspective how you’ve seen social and digital media kind of evolved since your career started and maybe what are some of the best practices you’ve learned along the way. Yeah, so I think it’s right now, it’s all about the one to one relationship with your readers. Whereas when I first got into this industry it was about, you know, get that message out there to a massive audience and you usually did. Well, I mean the traffic that we saw even at adweek from 2016 to 2024, you know.

Know when I first started Facebook was overwhelmingly our largest traffic driver when I was there for three four or five years. I mean, I mean, it could be 50% of the traffic was coming through Facebook. And now it’s 5% if that maybe 3% a LinkedIn eventually became the top traffic driver among the social platforms and you know where you see in media companies really thriving as often ones that have strong newsletters. I mean morning Brew came out of nowhere and really owns the B2B newsletter space because marketing brew and Healthcare Brewing all these retail where all these ones that they came up with really turn into strong newsletters that really owned a relationship with their audience and you see that with a lot of the media startups now is its newsletter first and if they have a website great, it’s not the emphasis and so that’s that’s you know,

An opportunity for any Publications if you can get that strong newsletter product that owns a relationship a one-on-one relationship with your reader. It makes it a lot easier to you know, build loyalty and drive subscriptions. If you’re a subscription business for a publisher. I want to ask a follow-up question too because that’s obviously the media side of things and it’s it’s where our you know operations really lie, but we were talking the other day and you talked about the the evolution that you’ve seen in terms of agencies too and maybe how they’ve gone about their own marketing stuff. How is that evolved because I can imagine that what we saw a decade ago doesn’t necessarily apply to now you got to be a lot more Nimble and have different strategies what really stands out to you in terms of how agencies are approaching their work. Yes. So on the agency front, I think you’ve seen this shifts away from these Legacy agencies to a lot of the smaller independent agencies and you know, if they can’t clearly tell you what they are about

And have the work to back it up. They’re going to struggle, you know, there’s the phrase documented, you know, 14000 ad agencies in the US and I would bet there’s less than a hundred of them where I can truly believe what their slogan is or what they’re about and you know have worked to back it up and you would see the mischiefs of the world and gut and Joan creative and a lot of these independent agencies, you know, even The Martin Agency which is you know, an ipg agency really have strong messaging around to they are and they’re the ones that are succeeding out there and it was great Khan from Mischief who in an agency the year profile for adweek last year, you know basis like if if you’re adding agency can’t build their own Brands. Why would you trust them as a client to build your brand and that was such a light bulb moment for me and how I thought about covering adage and seas of you know, if if they can’t

Say who they are and make it clear who they are. You know, you have to kind of question their chops a little bit. Yeah. It’s interesting to hear you bring that up because we’ve seen a transformation of some of the agencies and I’m sure Mark and leche are both think of some some of the ones that we’ve seen that have evolved their brand over the years are kind of restructured and stuff like that. It’s interesting to hear you talk about the words. Like they can’t do that internally. What’s the hope for doing that externally exactly and I’m excited to really get to know the healthcare agencies in this space because there’s so much great work out there. And yeah, I’m excited to know the players in this space a bit better because there is some overlap but not not a ton. Absolutely Lush. I want to bring you into the conversation too with any sort of questions. You’ve got for Jameson. Yeah, Jameson going back to sort of what you mentioned at the very beginning you said, you know as a publication or as an editor a reporter, it’s important not just to kind of cover the breaking news and industry but also really figure out what the audience wants and cover what the audience wants in your experience like how you know, this is actually something that at mmm we’ve

Also talked about you know, we’ve discussed this idea of becoming the go-to resource for healthcare marketers as opposed to just covering breaking news, but I’d love to hear from you. You know, how do you go about figuring out what your audience wants, you know as a publication as a journalist and how do you really hone in on that? Yeah. It’s a combination of two things. I mean one. It’s the quantitative. It’s looking through.

Lots of data which I’ve already begun doing. I’ve downloaded every story the data every story we’ve published as a publication this year and you know started to look for patterns and understand what performs what doesn’t and what people want. It’s also figuring out who exactly your audience is and so, you know, it’s discussing with people internally here who is actually reading mm&m. And who do we want reading? Mmm, and how do you align those two things as closely as possible? And then it’s more the qualitative stuff of you know, if you’re listening to this podcast reach out to me. I’d love to meet you here. You don’t hear from you and understand, you know, if you’re marketer, if you’re an agency exact if you’re whoever and you feel like you’re the target audience of them and them what do you feel like you want to read from a publication like us to really be able to understand the industry around you and help do your job better, you know, one of the things that you know perspectives I had at that week that applies 100% here is

At the end of the day, it’s a people business. You are only as good as the people doing the work, you know specially on the agency side, you know, your product is your people, you know on the brand side. Yeah, you have products but you still have marketers who no matter how good your product is the marketers are still the ones doing work. And if you put the people at the center of what you cover and you remember that like they’re just people trying to get by in their jobs. Your coverage is going to be so much better because you have that kind of human element and empathy towards, you know, the struggles and the everything that your audience is going through on a daily basis. Yeah. I think I want to follow up on that a little bit as well Jameson in terms of you know, how you figure out, you know what your audience wants. I know that you’ve sort of made a kind of a study of social media platforms themselves, but are you kind of proponents of a brand taking on its own social initiatives?

I think this brand has at least in recent memory has done some social initiatives for instance convinced me to vax, you know was a social initiative we did where we put out, you know words to our audience, you know, the medical marketers the creators like how would you convince people to vaccinate? This was around the covid pandemic and one had vaccine hesitancy was an issue or gun control. You know, how would you inspire an end to gun violence and sort of trying to ignite and Marshal, you know, the collective efforts of this of this audience and there are creative chops to a social cause and then you know, whether it’s you know, that takes the form of a video or some kind of campaign material then we would kind of showcase them in the magazines. That’s something that you would see to kind of put your own stamp on for the magazine. Yes. Certainly. I mean, I think it’s important for any company whether it’s a publication a farmer brand cpg Brandon have a point of view and that point of view often lends itself to you know, exactly.

What you’re talking about of you know, pushing forward initiatives that show who we are and what we stand for. And so yeah, I think when the opportunity is right, it’s absolutely continuing doing what mm and M has done in the past great. Yeah, and in terms of the the newsletter, you know, obviously we have the I think Under You Know Jack stewardship of the newsletter the last few years, you know, we’ve kind of really nicely, you know you to borrow your phrase owned owned a relationship with our audience and sort of kind of try to build on that in terms of the morning newsletter and then coming out with some additional iterations, you know, the afternoon newsletter the weekly digest the Weekender are there, you know interested to see how you kind of your sort of I know you’ve only been here a week. But you know, if you see any opportunities to kind of further build that out in terms of how we can own the relationship further with with our audience through the through the newsletters. Yeah. Absolutely, you know, I think the great thing about this

Publication is I’m sitting on this podcast with three people who really know their stuff from what I’ve seen in our great reporters and editors. And so there’s definitely going to be opportunity down the road to figure out how do we take the knowledge that everyone in this Newsroom has and put more of it in front of our readers. You know, I always I would always talk about this that add we can say the same goes for pretty much any publication that is, you know website first and then a newsletter is, you know, at the end of the day, you know, for example a story might only get 5,000 pages but on a daily basis with your audience, you may have 100,000 people in a newsletter list that 40 40 of them open. And so sometimes you have to remember like your audience is actually bigger and that newsletter inbox than it is on the website. And so there’s opportunities to figure out how to get more of that information that you’re reporting directly in front of those readers and that pays off, you know for the whole publication.

Because if you get the right sponsors in and you know make that point to them, you know, it newsletters become a better Financial product for the company and and so on and so yeah, I think there’s a lot of opportunities to take another step forward and really showcase, you know, everybody on the podcast at a more direct way with our with our readers over time.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I want to hop in there with a question that kind of goes back to you personally for a second you started your career working at CBS Sports had the experience that Bleacher Report as well. You have the experience of the post standard and Syracuse when you look at the various Publications that you’ve been at.

What is the work that stands out to you in terms of like that was my best work or that was something really cool. I got to do. I know that you’ve gotten to cover the final four. You’ve gotten to cover the Super Bowl but like one of the things that really stand out to you when you look at the different phases of your career that you’re like, that’s excellent. Yeah, that’s a good question. You know, I I was lucky enough that I was in the building with a press pass for bleacher report for the Syracuse UConn six overtime game, which is longest game in college basketball history was very proud of the work that I did that night as a 20 year old. I think not a lot of sleep. No. No, I worked until 5 a.m. That morning and then had to be back. Actually. I was back for the night games at night. They actually did not have a noon tip off that next day. That would kill me.

So as part of that and then there’s a lot of stuff that I week that was proud of, you know, I was I was present for a 4 A’s conference in Miami. It was right after the Parkland school shooting and they had brought in about 10 15 kids from Parkland High School or the Parkland school and had them speak to the forays and then I got invited up to a suite that they were all staying in they were there via the female quotients a female quotient was hosting them and myself and two other reporters from Mad weeks spent. I mean probably two or three hours with these kids just listening to them learning from them. They were basically there to make a plea to the ad industry to help them with gun control. And so, you know, we spent all night writing this, you know, long feature about you know, their experience and what they’re asking for and I mean, I remember I had Ad Agency is reach out to me after reading that story that then reached out to those.

Kids and started working for them and to or working with them and to see journalism lead to ad agencies willing to do gun control work to help, you know, 15 kids who you know are now bonded by this tragedy for the rest of their lives. I mean, you can’t do anything more important than that as a journalist. So that was always a career highlight and then on the complete 180 from that.

When gritty appeared the Flyers mascot, I convinced my boss to let me drive down the Philadelphia and spend an hour or two hours with the marketing team and they broke down every single detail of how they created gritty and I wrote the future on that. I mean it was my most read story of probably my entire career. I mean, I think about a half a million people read that story which is just crazy, you know had week. I mean we used to occasionally drive, you know, massive traffic like that but have a half million people read. The Bible on a mascot was pretty wild. I mean there were celebrities tweeting it. I mean it was I think it’s still my pin tweet that I just have never taken down because it was just such a crazy crazy day for me. What is crazy week. What is your favorite detail in the creation of gritty? Oh gosh.

As a good question. I know I remember they they went through so many different iterations of what the squeaker would be and his stomach that when you punch him he squeaks. So that was that was definitely one that stands out to me the fact that you had this room full of, you know, Marketing Executives debating over what squeakers should be in a mascot.

I’m envisioning a lot of merchandise here. That’s that’s terrific. Now from a fellow, you know, Philly sports fan. So glad to have another voice there. I’ve been in the I guess one of the loan I’ve actually kept quiet actually kept my mouth shut over here. So I don’t know that I’ll be changing but it’s good to have another fellow, you know sports fan on board and also, you know getting a little bit more, you know on your personal side to continue that not to get too personal, but I know you have a personal connection to health care. So your wife is a nurse. I also have you know, my my wife is awesome in healthcare. So it will you talk about Healthcare, you know with your wife or you kind of keep that separate separated at work only know we’ll definitely talk about I mean, she heard me talk way too much about the ad industry. And now at least my work is relevant to her. She’s a mother baby nurse at Morristown Hospital. She also does postpartum Consulting.

And she’s a lactation consultant and she is a substitute nurse in our kids school. So she covers a lot of healthcare stuff. And I mean she already she’s already like filled me in on things. I mean even when I got my Dell here at mmm. She’s like, oh Healthcare. Yeah, the you always work on Del’s. I’m like, okay good to know. Yes, welcome to healthcare. We’re 70% is still conducted via facts. All right. Any other questions for Jamison before we let him off the hook? Yeah. I have one final question. What do you most excited about at mmm to do?

Oh, that is a great question.

I think the impression I have gotten here is

that this is a publication that it’s already a great publication and it’s a publication doing well, which doesn’t happen a lot in media these days and so, you know, it’s the opportunity to take something that’s really good already and make it even better and that I’m coming into a workplace where it’s not like here’s 7000 fires that you need to put out and fix it’s you know take what a bunch of really good journalists are already doing and figure out how to make it even better because you know, from what I have seen and what I started reading, you know when I started getting

Into this process was just so much good journalism. And so I’m really excited to work with talented people and an organization, you know cross Haymarket that everyone here seems like they really know what they’re doing and they’ve been so nice and so kind it’s been really refreshing to walk into a company that really has its act together and you know is is here to do good work and make something good even better. Great. Well on that note, you know, we’re just want to say we’re thrilled to have you on board or thrilled to welcome you and we’re really excited to be able to call you a colleague. Thank you for joining us on this week’s podcast. Be sure to join us next week. We’ll be joined by Nevada Health who’s the chief privacy officer at Merck for AI deciphered preview podcast.

That’s it for this week. The M&M podcast is produced by Bill Fitzpatrick Gordon failure lesson. Our theme music is by Susie him sohn rate review and follow every episode wherever you listen to podcasts new episodes out every week and be sure to check out our website and online.com for the top news stories and farmer marketing.