Moving to New York City in the 1990s after spending her early youth in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Katie Kinsella started her career working in fashion at Hugo Boss and Kenneth Cole.
It didn’t take long for Katie to find herself with opportunities in the US watch industry, however.
At a birthday party, she bumped into Hratch Kaprielian, chief executive of Franck Muller USA, who offered her a job in marketing the very next day.
On that first experience working in the industry, Katie reflects: “On my first day on the job, he handed me the watch catalog and said in three months I needed to know everything about the brand and every watch inside it. To this day, I still have the style numbers memorized and Casablanca will never refer to a Humphrey Bogart film to me.”
She continues: “Two hours after our first meeting, Hratch called the office and asked me to meet him at an address on the Upper East Side. I walked in and met Franck Muller, Gianni Versace and Elton John. I left there having a good feeling about my new career change.”
After several years at Franck Muller, Katie went to David Yurman as vice-president of marketing, then fashion industry magazine WWD as the jewelry and watch director before opening her own marketing agency in 2001 with Kerry Kinney, thus forming Kinney + Kinsella.
The very first accounts for the newly formed company were Jaeger-LeCoultre and Cellini Jewelers. The company has since worked with well-known jewelry brands such as Roberto Coin, luxury retailers including Manfredi Jewels, Ben Bridge Jeweler, London Jewelers and Wempe, and watch brands Roger DuBuis, Franck Muller, Zenith, Raymond Weil, Bremont, Hermes, Montblanc, Mido, Michelle and Citizen.
“When Kerry and I created Kinney + Kinsella, we wanted to be different,” she says.
“Not just an advertising or public relations agency but an integrated branding and creative services agency. We act as our clients’ marketing director, creative director, media specialist, publicist, social media strategist and event planner. We look to really partner with each and every one of our clients in not just the watch and jewelry industry but in fashion, interior design, education and tech industries. We try to look at the whole picture and build on the brand’s foundation to layer in all the essential marketing components.”
Outside of work, Katie spends as much time as she can with her husband Matt and their two sons, Sean and Ryan.
They love spending time in the pool or on the beach together in the summer, while shuffling between soccer, Little League and basketball in the other months.
Katie comments: “This how we kill the time until our very fun football Sundays, where, in my case, we are rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles.”
