The MPP Team
Dave Kettler and Tracy Unger are the driving forces behind Media Place Partners and have been since its inception. As you learn more about them below, you’ll see why Media Place Partners has grown into one of the largest independent media buyers in the Midwest. It’s time to meet the team at Media Place Partners.
Dave Kettler – Partner
Tracy Unger – Partner
David Kettler is the founder of Media Place Partners; Grand Rapids’ leading media services firm providing media consulting, planning, and buying to clients.
David saw a hole in the region for media services firm and started MPP in 2005. Prior to the founding of Media Place Partners, David represented media companies for a dozen years in the Detroit and Grand Rapids markets. He has served as an Adjunct Professor at Grand Valley State University for a 400 level Media Planning class and works with college students with job shadows and internships and often makes guest speaking appearances in college media classes.
David donates time and resources to Grand Rapids cultural institutions and non-profits. He attended college at Grand Valley State University where he studied advertising and public relations and played football for 4 years.
How much experience does Tracy have in advertising? Try two and a half decades!
Tracy graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in advertising and had hoped to become a graphic artist. The world had other plans. Tracy got her first real exposure to media planning and buying as an agency assistant for the McDonald’s account. The agency bought McDonald’s billboards all over Michigan and Indiana. This little taste was all it took, the work was interesting, challenging, and Tracy excelled at it. She was all in.
Her aptitude for OOH was noticed and she was quickly moved to the Grand Rapids office of the agency of record for McDonalds. What was once only billboards was now all advertising, planning and buying for McDonalds across Michigan. That meant TV and Radio, and Tracy was soaking it all up.
Agencies of Record come and go, and when McDonald’s moved on, so did Tracy. She began planning and buying media for Horizon Outlet Malls across the entire US and took a position at Johnson & Dean Advertising as their Media Planner/Buyer. Five years later Johnson & Dean closed their doors and Tracy went solo, working for herself at Freelance Media.
After five years of solo work, Tracy met with Dave Kettler to discuss what would become Media Place Partners. The rest, as they say, is history.
Today, Tracy lives in Rockford Michigan, just north of Grand Rapids with her husband, three children, a blind dog, and a fat cat (yes, really). When she’s not crushing it for clients, Tracy loves reading books, watching the Real Housewives (all of them), managing the Bachelor bracket for MPP, golfing, and spending time with family and friends.