When you have a job as wide-ranging as Jennifer Rogers does, it helps to have a superpower. Rogers leads marketing strategy and execution across linear, brand and product teams at TelevisaUnivision, the Hispanic-language multimedia content giant. She heads up all creative, branding, messaging and media planning on- and off-network for the conglomerate’s portfolio of U.S. Networks. Good thing her superpower is empowerment.
Leader Who Listens
The ultimate team leader, Rogers likes to have all creative voices in the room from the start of a project, whether it’s strategizing for one of the company’s successful music awards shows or its recent rebranding of the news division. “I think the special sauce of teams is making sure there’s a diversity of skill sets, a diversity of thinking,” Rogers said. “What I really stress with my team is workflow process. People tend to work in linear order — they tend to do the next thing they have to. But when you change the workflow, [everybody is] part of the process from the beginning, which makes a huge difference in terms of results. … We let the experts do their work, and respect it.”
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The respect does not go unnoticed. “Relatable, transparent, straight-shooting, she leads with a solid moral compass and is one of the most empathetic leaders I’ve ever worked with,” Erica Mesa, VP, media strategy and consumer marketing for TelevisaUnivision, said. “Jennifer deserves to be a Wonder Woman not because of her superhuman skills, but rather her superbly human leadership style.”
Yes, it’s about ratings and share and metrics, but people really work here in service of the U.S. Hispanic community, and they never lose that focus.”
— Jennifer Rogers
It helps to love the arena you get to play in every day, and for Rogers, that sensibility was born at the very start of college at the University of Pennsylvania. “My whole childhood, I wanted to be a pediatrician. I went to college, and I took a biology course and a marketing course in my first semester freshman year, and that was it,” Rogers recalled. “From that first marketing class, I knew that I wanted to be a marketer. It was so challenging. There was so much to learn, so many goals to meet, and it was creative. I moved to that major immediately, and I haven’t looked back.”
It led her to a consumer marketing post at PrimeStar/DirecTV and, later, to a post heading up the Sales Marketing & Production department at NBC TV Network/Telemundo/Mun2. Through myriad corporate shifts at NBC, “I kept being asked to do new and different things,” Rogers said. The need to constantly adapt served her well. “We’re in this business because of change, right? Not to be comfortable, but to constantly keep an external focus and learn and grow and shift. I’m grateful that it really prepared me for the reality of now.”
The “now” finds Rogers awash in the unique challenges of serving TelevisaUnivision’s viewership and anticipating the flow of trends. “We’ve always been a mission-driven company,” she said. “We serve our audience like no one else can, and it really gives the job a meaning behind the role. Yes, it’s about ratings and share and metrics, but people really work here in service of the U.S. Hispanic community, and they never lose that focus.”
Representing at All Levels
It helps to not only have access to the right data, but to embrace the whole process. “It’s the backbone of everything we do,” Rogers said. “And it’s challenging. Consumer behavior shifts minute by minute. We’re constantly testing and learning. My biggest challenge is making sure that the data is based on the proper measurement and truly representative.”
The “truly representative” piece also applies to TelevisaUnivision itself, which is why Rogers is a founding member and current steering committee leader of the company’s Women’s Leadership Committee, which works to ensure a diverse next generation of executives. “Particularly for women and minorities, I continue to keep the focus on raising women up,” Rogers said. “It’s given them career skills, and it continues to allow us to give women a voice in the company.”
Leading by example and empowerment, Rogers’ voice continues to be a beacon of success at TelevisaUnivision. Ignacio Meyer, president, Univision Television Networks Group, specifically cites her contributions to the rollout of the global streaming platform ViX last year, while also recalibrating the U.S. network’s promotional plan, which “yielded results met for ViX penetration, and a ratings turnaround on our primetime programming. She is able to synthesize the big picture and get granular enough to craft a rigorous on- and off-network plan,” Meyer said. “This is rarefied air.”
