William W. Cone

Willie grew up just 150 miles south of the Arctic Circle in the frontier town of Fairbanks, Alaska. He produced his first event/cause marketing project as a high school senior, an international “Walk for Development.” Willie has been consulting on special events, public relations, promotions, social responsibility initiatives and cause marketing programs of all types and sizes for three decades. He has been involved with major promotions and causes in more than 1,400 cities and towns across North America and Europe. He spent 13 years with the international educational and cultural program “Up With People.” As vice president of North American Marketing, he developed media and corporate sponsors for musical show tours, cultural exchanges and community involvement programs by five international casts in 350 cities annually.

In 1986, after taking a year to backpack “off the beaten path” around the world through 30 countries, Willie returned to the U.S. and started his marketing consulting business in Washington D.C. He has played a role in the development of promotional marketing and community projects as diverse as Hands Across America for Coca Cola, a salute to the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution for Xerox and Nabisco, Kodak’s 100th Anniversary of the Snapshot, General Motors' 75th Anniversary, The Stratford Theatre Festival of Canada, The 400th Anniversary of Virginia, and an international papal event.

Knight Ridder Newspapers recruited Willie in 1993 to launch the corporate event marketing initiative for their newspapers. For the next six years Willie worked closely with the senior management at 35 newspapers across the nation on the development of more than 250 diverse revenue-generating events, including consumer shows, festivals, sports events, seminars, concerts and numerous other special projects. In addition to overseeing events, Willie advised KR papers on promotional campaigns, marketing strategies, branding initiatives, Newspapers in Education programs and community relations outreach.

The Miami Herald Publishing Co. in 1999 invited Willie to lead a new venture: creating an entrepreneurial business around events and promotions. He used event marketing to work across all product lines and departments within the company. His mandate was to drive new revenue from both traditional and non-traditional sources and to strengthen the overall branding and marketing efforts of all business divisions within the company. Willie tripled the Herald’s event revenue while broadening its community impact.

In 2001, having successfully grown the paper’s event business, Willie reopened his consulting and project management practice to work with media companies, corporations, marketing agencies, educational groups, governmental bodies and non-profit organizations on how to maximize revenue and publicity through creative partnerships, promotions and cause marketing. He continues to consult to profit and non-profit sector national clients on how to maximize their cause marketing, sponsorships, media, government relations, events and promotions.

Willie is a frequent speaker, workshop leader and panelist for media and marketing conferences. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Arizona and he holds an MBA degree in international management, with top honors from, Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management. Willie has worked, studied, lived and traveled in 68 countries on six continents including a climb to "Africa’s Rooftop," Mount Kilimanjaro. He and his wife Sheila, an independent writer, publicist and television producer, live in Miami.