From ADOTATJess Ling Quit a Fortune 50 Job to Learn the Work. Amex Just Gave Her All of It.
Amex Calls Jess Ling Disciplined. Its Marketing Bill Rose 11%.Pick
By Pesach Lattin,
On Nov. 30, Jess Ling becomes chief marketing officer of American Express, taking over from Elizabeth Rutledge, who retires in March after 37 years. The announcement credits Ling with bringing discipline to media spending. ADOTAT checks words like that for a living. Amex spent $6.3 billion on marketing in 2025, up roughly 75% since 2019, the year she arrived. Last quarter marketing rose another 11%, to $1.77 billion, in the same quarter Amex booked a $336 million restructuring charge to cut about 5% of its positions. That reads like the opposite of discipline.
Then the calls. On the fourth quarter 2025 call, the CFO said Amex had moved money away from cheaper cash back cards and toward premium ones. Fewer new cards. The share paying an annual fee rose eight points. By the third quarter of 2026, 76% of new accounts carried a fee, net card fees were up 17%, and U.S. consumer spending on the cards grew 9.4%. Ling had to sell the hardest piece: the Platinum fee going from $695 to $895, against more than $3,500 in advertised credits. A year later Amex reported 99% spend retention on the card. Discipline here means spending more on purpose and knowing what came back.
Her résumé explains the habit. By her count she spent about 17 years in B2B and revenue marketing, with stops at Microsoft, Atlas and AOL, then ran B2B marketing at Verizon Media, the team that pitched advertisers. Advertisers like Amex. She joined Amex in October 2019, ran prospect acquisition, the most measured job in a card company, and only moved to brand in 2023. She built OnBrand, the in-house agency, and still let Goodby Silverstein win the U.S. creative account in 2025. She took the work agencies never wanted and left them the work they do best.
For anyone selling media, data or ad tech, she has already published the rules. Every partner must bring reach the plan does not already have. Every placement is measured on its own. The data has to come back and test whether the original idea was even right. AI stays in the workflow and out of anything a customer sees. Her own line on brand spend: "It's not consideration and awareness at any cost or by any means." She sat on the selling side for years. She knows which slide is hiding the weak number.
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Expanded from ADOTAT's Nov. 11 profile, which draws on American Express's appointment announcement as reported by Adweek and B&T; the company's earnings materials and calls from the fourth quarter of 2025 through the third quarter of 2026; coverage of the 2025 Platinum refresh and the 2025 creative agency review; and Ling's recorded interviews with The Current Podcast, The Speed of Culture and the New York Stock Exchange. Quotes come from published transcripts, show notes and statements; paraphrases of two video interviews rely on captions. The Current is published by The Trade Desk, which sells advertising technology to marketers like American Express. The financial figures are company-wide results, not numbers Ling alone controls, and Amex does not disclose her budget. The 60% and 17-year figures are her own count. Her early career dates are not on the public record in detail. Ling was not interviewed, and no one at American Express reviewed the piece before publication. ADOTAT has no financial relationship with American Express; its publisher carries an American Express business card with no annual fee. ADOTAT is reader-supported, with no paid placement in editorial.