American Express promotes Jess Ling to chief marketing officer.
American Express has named Jess Ling its chief marketing officer from 30 November. She replaces Elizabeth Rutledge, who retires in March 2027.
The appointment was announced in a memo to staff from Howard Grosfield, group president of US consumer services, published on the company's newsroom on 5 November and also reported by Adweek. Ling is currently executive vice president of global brand advertising. She has more than 20 years in marketing, advertising and media, and led B2B marketing at Verizon Media before joining American Express in 2019. She moved to the global advertising and brand management team in 2023.
The memo credits her with changing how the company develops creative and buys media, tying brand spending more closely to business growth and bringing more discipline to media investment. It also says she helped build OnBrand, American Express's in-house creative agency. Rutledge, who has spent more than three decades at the company, will work with Ling and Grosfield on the handover before she retires.
The memo does not say whether the CMO role's remit changes, or how the in-house agency will sit alongside the company's outside agencies. Those are the questions agencies on the account will be asking.
Our read: for agencies in the Gulf working with financial brands that are weighing their own in-house studios, the choice of a CMO with in-house agency experience is worth noting.
Why it matters
A major global advertiser hands its top marketing job to the executive who helped build its in-house creative agency, a signal for agencies on in-house versus outside work.
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