Paul Kiewiet | Must Read Inside The Final Trade Show Of A Promo Legend Paul Kiewiet took MiPPA from near ruins to a thriving regional association. While recently overseeing an event at an NFL stadium, he went out on his own terms. By Jonny Auping The sun was setting upon Ford Field in mid-September, with the remaining light of dusk peaking onto the turf where the Detroit Lions play football on Sundays. As it were, the sun was also setting on the career of Paul Kiewiet, MAS, the executive director of the Michigan Promotional Products Association (MiPPA) and a PPAI Hall of Fame inductee. It was the eve of Promotions That ROAR – a MiPPA trade show and end user experience that Kiewiet pitched a decade earlier and has overseen every year since – and what was intended as a pre-show get-together at the stadium’s Gridiron Club turned into a celebration of Kiewiet, who had thought that he had kept his impending retirement under wraps outside of the MiPPA board of directors. Longstanding suppliers showered him with gifts related to his passions; skiing, hiking and fishing. “He invented this,” Tony Shereda, president of MiPPA’s board of directors and VP of sales and marketing at QMI Group, told the attendees the next morning, just before the trade floor opened. And make no mistake, it’s one of promo’s premier events. Shereda credits Kiewiet with the industry so commonly using the word “event” rather than simply “trade show.” The PPAI Expo may be the industry’s largest event, but at a regional level, Kiewiet has long prickled Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan PPAI • DECEMBER 2024 • 53
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzU4OQ==