The Stagwell Group, which is based in D.C., announced its fund, Stagwell Media LLC, acquired certain custom research assets from Nielsen, including the Harris brand and the Harris Poll. As part of the transition, Harris will relaunch as Harris Insights & Analytics. The Harris Poll brand remains unchanged.

“We are pleased to bring into the group one of the truly great brands in public opinion research,” said Mark Penn, Managing Partner and President of The Stagwell Group, LLC. “We are excited to relaunch the Harris brand and to bring deep research insights and 21^st century analytics to our clients’ biggest challenges. We will harness all of the opportunities of real-time data to bring state of the art research to our clients.”

The firm was originally founded by Lou Harris in 1963, who was pollster to President John F. Kennedy, and later acquired Wirthlin Worldwide, founded by Richard Wirthlin who was pollster to President Ronald Reagan. As part of Stagwell, run by Mark Penn who was pollster to President Bill Clinton, Harris will focus on brand management, corporate reputation, consumer packaged goods, public opinion and consumer experience research. Its clients include media organizations like CNN, People and ESPN, as well as corporations throughout the Fortune 500 such as: FedEx, IBM, Amazon, General Mills, MasterCard, Chevron and Ford. Every week, Harris conducts qualitative and quantitative and offline survey research in the U.S. and many international markets.

This is Stagwell’s fifth majority-owned acquisition in the marketing services industry with key disciplines in digital marketing. Harris will join strategic communications firm SKDKnickerbocker, entertainment research firm National Research Group (NRG), creative digital firm Code and Theory, and integrated performance-driven global marketing firm PMX Agency.