John Willie

Background

About John Willie

John’s core equities revolve around brand, marketing, and communications planning. He has over 25 years experience, including higher education brand marketing, with experience in business-to-business, business-to-consumer, financial, durable goods and technology distribution categories. He has extensive consumer new product development through live market testing and rollout. John has spent much of his career in the brand development planning/advertising/public relations business with such global firms as J. Walter Thomson and Y&R. He was also one of four principal owners of a branding communications firm in Chicago. At these agencies, he worked with such brands as Wilson Golf, Sears, S.C. Johnson, Kraft, Quaker, Associates Financial Corp, Mutual of Omaha, Pizza Hut (franchisee groups), Mellon Bank, Unilever (Disney/Popsicle frozen treats), R.T. French, Borden Snacks and Florsheim. John relocated from Chicago to Phoenix to work with Thunderbird, Graduate School of International Management as their global brand marketing resource. There, he created and taught Thunderbird’s capstone global branding course. His academic and practitioner experience has migrated into a specialist in brand marketing, integrated marketing communications planning. He also has deep experience in qualitative, quantitative research design through new product test programs. John received his undergraduate degree from University of Utah and graduate studies from Northwestern University. He was a member of the University of Utah Ski team and an Alta, Utah ski instructor. Specialties: Brand planning specialist, qualitative-quantitative primary research methodologies, creative concepting, new product concepts through in-market introduction.