Ben Jankowski, the former senior VP of global media at Mastercard, whose decades of experience and leadership positioned him as a well-known titan in his industry, died on Jan. 27, at the age of 63.
Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Jankowski was an ad man for his entire adult life, starting his career in the marketing business more than 40 years ago with his first post-college job as a media planner at Grey, according to his LinkedIn profile.
From there, he worked his way up, coming to hold high-level planning and account director roles at firms including BBDO, Havas Media’s MPG and Omnicom Media Group. Working in both the U.S. and Chinese markets over the years, his career saw close collaborations with some of the world’s largest advertisers including PepsiCo, Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble.
“When you met Ben, chances are you immediately knew of his love for his family, sports and the media industry,” recalled Kevin McCarthy, senior VP, account management at Icon International, who met Jankowski in 1987 when he started at BBDO as an intern.
In 2010, Jankowski landed a job leading global media and sponsorship for Mastercard—a role he held for more than a decade, his tenure overlapping with a number of the company’s marketing milestones and awards.
After leaving Mastercard a little over two years ago, Jankowski launched a firm of his own: Modern Media Solutions, a consultancy rooted in its founder and CEO’s lifetime of industry expertise, while also working part-time as a senior consultant for R3, which remembered him as “a peer and a personality” in a recent LinkedIn post.
A quick search of his name there yields dozens of other personal tributes and comments that have since poured in, with friends and colleagues variously describing him as “a hard worker” and “a man with a heart of gold.”
“Ben had tremendous impact on our industry, as evidenced by all of the touching tributes from around the world,” Traci Spiegelman, Mastercard’s current VP of global media, wrote on the networking site, recalling that the “industry legend” originally hired her when she was six months pregnant and that, when discussed, he responded: “Thank you for telling me, congratulations, but it doesn’t affect my decision. I’m not hiring for the short term here. If you’re in it for the long haul, so am I.”
“Everyone I tell that story says the same thing: ‘wow.’ If you don’t know Ben, that’s an expected response. But the truth is, it is not surprising at all—he was just that kind of person,” she added.
Michael Kaplan, director of agency business development at Google, who had known Jankowski since the mid-1990s, recalls his passion for tackling complex personal and professional challenges head-on. “His love for the complicated problem made everyone around him better.”
“To be his friend means you learned how to have direct conversations; to say what you’re thinking and talk through why,” he said.
Jankowski was not only a leader in his workplaces, but also in the industry at large, holding roles at organizations such as the Association of National Advertisers and the World Federation of Advertisers while also being noted as a frequent speaker at CES, Advertising Week and Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, among others.
“What always struck me about him is he cared more about our industry than anyone else I’ve ever met. He loved our business and wanted to help frame it and make sure it was better,” said Denis Gallagher, VP of the agency development team at Dotdash Meredith, who said he first bonded with Jankowski over fantasy football roughly 12 years ago.
An alumnus of Philadelphia’s Temple University, where he met his wife, Brenda, as a student and later taught an advertising course as an adjunct professor, Jankowski was a long-time devotee to his alma mater and his home state of Pennsylvania.
Often commuting from his home there to New York for work, he retained close ties to the Keystone State throughout his life and strong allegiances to its largest city’s sports teams, frequenting the Eagles’ Lincoln Financial Field and the Phillies’ Citizens Bank Park.
“When there was an [Eagles] game, we were watching it together. We commiserated as being long-suffering fans, and when they won the Super Bowl, we were each others’ first calls,” Gallagher said.
Jankowski is survived by his wife, Brenda, and their two daughters, Kathryn and Alex.
To honor his legacy, an annual scholarship for an advertising student at Temple’s Lew Klein College of Media and Communication has been established, and an additional fund to create a collaborative workspace at the school is currently being finalized. Mourners have been asked to contribute to that project in lieu of flowers, his family said.
