Businessman harnesses German roots in WV
WV State Journal / WOWK-TV 08-20-2015 Jens Kristian Kiel moved to West Virginia not only from a different culture, but a different country. Kiel is the owner of Made in Germany, a marketing and creative strategy firm based in South Charleston. Kiel has lived in the state for several years, moving in 2005 to marry a woman he met online. That woman, Marianna Lyon, had such an influence on Kiel they agreed to begin dating long distance for ...
Happy Birthday, Made in Germany!
We celebrate Made in Germany’s second anniversary today; it’s been 24 months since that memorable trip to the Secretary of State’s office. I remember that it caught a few people by surprise, especially my West Virginia family and my network of collaborators. My Father-in-Law knew of my entrepreneurial roots, and he had been encouraging me for years to put the skillset that I forged in the metropolitan area of Germany’s Ruhrgebiet to ...
The Apple Watch
As an early adopter and tech aficionado, I have used a few smart watches in the last two decades. I owned a Pager Swatch in 1993, and a Timex Datalink in 1994, and my curiosity arose when I saw a wristband offered for the iPod Nano in 2010. It seemed then, that the so-called iWatch was not very far. Now we know that Sir Jonathan Ive and the Apple Design Team started their work on a new product category that year, and when Tim Cook announced ...
The Proof Is In The Pudding
The other day, I talked to a friend about the way solopreneurs work. He knew that I worked my share in the marketing and advertising industry, and that our family owned and operated an advertising agency very much in line with the principles of David Ogilvy. As the son of two entrepreneurs, I was groomed to run a company, and after earning my wings working as the in-house agency of a Microsoft OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer), I spent most ...
DCE Workshop Video Online
An introductory workshop session to help transpose your analog skills for application in a digital world. As the media of communication have changed, so has the way we communicate within them. It demonstrates how to communicate your message clearly across different media and platforms, and circumvent the pitfalls of email communication and social media. 00:00 Greeting 02:08 Email Etiquette 35:20 VOIP & Telephone Etiquette 52:00 ...
Holiday Message 2014
Friends, collaborators, and champions of Made in Germany, As we recall wonderful hours spent this summer, we can not imagine any of the progress we made in the last 16 months happening without you. You have challenged us, cheered us, and most of all embraced us and made us part of your professional and personal lives. For that we are thankful, and look forward to what 2015 will bring. (more…)
Public Relations/Integrated Marketing Communications in Germany
As posted on on Aubia Communications The strongest economic country in the European Union, Germany is well known for its efficiency and attention to detail. As a European leader, Deutschland’s marketing and communications industry is well advanced. Living next door in the German section of Switzerland for the past six months, I’ve had the chance to observe, visit and participate in the German-influenced culture. From the people to the ...
West Virginia: The State of 3-D Printing
An advantage of 3-D printing over traditional machine tooling, especially during the development stage, is the ease of modification with minimal financial effort. For example, a quick way to create a metal machine part for a prototype is to 3-D print an object with plastic or wax, then create a ceramic mold from it by wet-dipping it in a slurry of binder and coating, hardening the shell and die-casting with liquid metal.
More Than Talk
As an organizer and workshop host for Create WV, I was asked to summarize my 2013 experience in Richwood for the 'Opportunities' magazine, an insert to the current issue of the West Virginia Focus magazine. Please click the picture to view, or download the PDF here. Please register for the 2014 conference at www.createwv.org and sign up for my October 26th workshop on "Digital Communications Etiquette." I look forward to seeing you in ...
On Transparency
When I first became aware of how transparency would impact and change the way the industry - of which I had been a part of for almost three decades - works and will work in the future, I was excited, curious, and a little bit scared. With the availability of a search engine to the world's knowledge (Google Search) and a video library to the how-to on anything (YouTube), we must assume that business professionals are perfectly aware what ...