Both of Kevin's paternal grandparents were German Jews, childhood sweethearts from Bamberg. His grandfather, Howard Plessner, fled Germany for the United States in 1938. His grandmother, Luise Silbermann, fled to England in 1939 and lived through the Blitz in London, Wales, and Glasgow. Howard enlisted in the U.S. Army Signal Corps; stationed in England in 1944, he found Luise, and they married in Suffolk on June 7 — one day after D-Day. After the war, Luise emigrated to the United States, and they settled together in Philadelphia, where Kevin's father, Ken, was born in 1949.
Their parents — Friedrich and Alice Silbermann of Bamberg, and Alfred and Margarethe Plessner of Coburg — did not make it out. All four were deported in late November 1941 and murdered at Jungfernhof concentration camp near Riga, Latvia, among the first Jews of Germany killed in the eastern deportations. Ken grew up without grandparents.
The firm carries both family names forward — the Silbermann name on the door, the Plessner name on the founder.
Silbermann Media Group was founded in February 2026, after twenty years of senior media experience across The Awareness Group and Landau Carriage — most recently six years as General Manager at Landau, where Kevin ran the agency's media practice across studio, brand, and publishing clients. SMG was built to do the work without the agency overhead: one senior operator, direct vendor relationships, transparent pricing, and a bias toward campaigns that earn their place in a cultural release rather than padding it.
The firm is based in Brooklyn and works nationally. Current engagements include theatrical and home-entertainment campaigns for independent distributors, ongoing retail and brand partnerships, and influencer campaign management for publishers. Active client relationships span Bad Hat Harry, Catbird, David C Cook, Renaissance Communications, and others.
