Entertainment Research Firm NRG Taps Ipsos Exec Ben Rogers

By Variety Staff

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – National Research Group (NRG), which caters to movie studios and others in the entertainment industry, hired Ben Rogers as president of platform and technology clients.

Rogers, a market-research veteran with 20-plus years of experience, most recently was at Ipsos as executive VP, head of media development. At , he will lead the company’s technology practice across several dimensions of the product and services life cycle, including market landscaping, brand and positioning strategy, creative and platform optimization, and performance tracking. Rogers will remain based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“Ben is a preeminent technology research executive and business leader with a deep history of success in using insights to drive impact across the life cycle of technology products and services,” NRG CEO Jon Penn said in announcing Rogers’ hire. “He is the ideal person to take our rapidly expanding platform and service business to great new heights.”

Rogers joined Ipsos in 2012 with the company’s acquisition of Synovate, where he had been SVP of technology and telecoms leading the Microsoft relationship globally. Before that, he led various teams on technology accounts for Kantar/TNS Global and also worked for research firms GfK and NOP World.

“I’m excited to build upon NRG’s core expertise as trusted advisers to bold storytellers everywhere on every screen,” Rogers commented. “Given the confluence of technology, platforms, and content, it’s a natural next step for NRG to expand upon its content creator focus to help clients solve a broader set of strategic business challenges.”

Founded in 1978, NRG was bought in 1997 by publishing company VNU, which integrated NRG into Nielsen in 2002 . In 2015, Mark Penn’s Stagwell Group bought NRG from Nielsen for an undisclosed price and appointed his nephew, Jon Penn, as CEO.