American Express’ Jessica Ling on tapping into Gen Z fandom with Olivia Rodrigo

Amex’s Jessica Ling sits down with The Current Podcast to discuss the biggest differences between marketing to business and to consumers, and how the brand considers the effectiveness and efficiency of marketing investments. She also touches on how Amex is reaching Gen Z by tapping into their passions and fandoms, such as a partnership with Olivia Rodrigo.

 

Episode Transcript

Please note, this transcript  may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio.

[00:00:00] Damian: I'm Damian

 

[00:00:01] Ilyse: And I'm Ilyse Liffreing.

 

[00:00:02] Damian: And welcome to this edition of The Current Podcast.

 

[00:00:04] Ilyse: This week, we're delighted to talk with Jess Ling, Executive Vice President of Global Brand Advertising at American Express.

 

[00:00:12] Damian: Now, American Express, as everyone knows, is one of the world's most recognized brands. Thanks especially to its striking visual identity on its cards, which features the company logo of a centurion, which evokes trust and security. Now, Amex is a company that can chart its cultural presence through its legacy of brand campaigns, all the way to date with its powerful backing campaign.

 

[00:00:35] Ilyse: Jess has been at Amex for the past five years. As part of her role, she oversees Amex's in house creative agency. During her time, she's helped grow the brand's offerings into experiences and benefits for its many members.

 

[00:00:48] Damian: Now, Jess built her career at Amex first as a B2B marketer, but now she's a consumer facing brand marketer. We started by asking her about this transition.

 

[00:00:57] Damian: Jess, thank you for being here.

 

[00:00:59] Jess: Thank you [00:01:00] for having me.

 

[00:01:00] Damian: I know that you've spent six years at Verizon doing B2B marketing and your first four years at Amex were also B2B, but you've shifted now into a different department.

 

[00:01:10] What's that change like and what are the differences when it comes to marketing to businesses versus marketing to consumers? 

 

[00:01:18] Jess: Yeah, but it's a great question. I actually spent, I would say, probably the first 17 years of my career. In B to B and in revenue marketing. And even when I came to American Express, it was B to B marketing. But it was also performance marketing. So very, very heavy on the acquisition side.

 

[00:01:35] What I would say is, more actually unites them than separates them, right? When you think about B2B versus B2C, it is really fundamentally about knowing your audience. It's about understanding segmentation. It's about being very anchored in insights, understanding what motivates and what challenges your consumer, whether that is a small business, corporate prospect or a consumer. It's a little bit different in terms of the way we bring our brand to life, right? When you think about, more business focused channels versus consumer channels, but I would say at its core, the discipline is the same. And in fact, the rigor that you bring from B to B into B to C enables you to be a bit more focused on what are the financial and revenue implications of the work that we're doing.

 

[00:02:27] Damian: We're hearing that a lot more now about the CFO and the CMO being much closer together. Is that a factor for you as a marketer?

 

[00:02:33] Jess: you as a marketer? Financial outcomes are very important to us as a brand. It's really important. We are a performance driven culture. Much of our marketing is performance driven. I would say even on the brand side of the house, We are incredibly rigorous, and so we think a lot about not just the efficacy of our investments, but the efficiency of them.

 

[00:02:55] And so while I am thinking about, metrics that are a little bit, higher [00:03:00] in the funn