01 challenge
cornerstone needs to stick
Cornerstone offered real client work, opportunities across consulting and design, and a close community, yet despite all of this, not many people knew about the club on campus. Our challenge was making those strengths visible to students encountering us for the first time.
Recruitment overlapped with other campus organizations competing for the same audience. Meanwhile, our social presence at the time offered limited insight into members’ personalities and experiences. We needed a campaign that explained our value and gave students a reason to picture themselves here.
How might we effectively communicate Cornerstone’s professional opportunities while making its community feel approachable?
02 swot
taking note
We began with a SWOT analysis to identify Cornerstone’s strengths, gaps, and opportunities within UCSD’s student organization landscape.
Three findings shaped our direction:
Real work was a strong differentiator. Pro bono projects gave students opportunities to support local and real businesses and build their portfolios.
Our people needed more visibility. Previous marketing communicated the technical side of Cornerstone well, but it offered little insight into the people behind the organization. We saw an opportunity to showcase the community and help prospective members form a connection before attending recruitment.
Timing increased the competition. Overlapping recruitment schedules made clear, recognizable messaging especially valuable. we needed something that was going to stick with our audience.
marketing in previous years
03 content strategy
putting ideas to paper
We organized our content around three questions a prospective member might ask:
What could I learn?
Internship spotlights and project stories would demonstrate how members applied their skills beyond the organization.
Who would I meet?
Summer postcards, member features, and board introductions would make the people behind Cornerstone more familiar.
How do I get involved?
Informational graphics, recruitment timelines, and event reminders would give interested students a clear next step.
Each format had a purpose: build interest, create familiarity, or help someone take action.
04 ideation
note to self: this needs to be awesome
We explored several visual directions, including editorial layouts, puzzles, files, and many more. Each offered a different way to introduce Cornerstone and tell our members’ stories.
A question that kept coming up: how could the campaign feel personal while maintaining the polish expected of a consulting organization?
One night, I was staring at the Cornerstone logo and an idea formed: Post-it notes
05 campaign concept
stick to cornerstone
“Stick to Cornerstone” connected our recruitment message with a recognizable visual: the Post-it note.
The phrase invited students to find a community they wanted to stay with. Visually, the notes created space for member introductions, personal reflections, and recruitment information within one campaign direction.
From there we began to mood board and plan out the timeline of posts we wanted to launch.
06 teasing
summer notes
Our summer content plan introduced Cornerstone to students as early as August. We wanted students to meet members of the club they would eventually meet during recruitment in October.
These summer updates needed to:
show our personality
professional growth
foreshadow and generate hype for recruitment
The postcard series was designed to share what members had been doing over the break, helping prospective recruits recognize familiar faces when they arrived. I was largely inspired by vintage postcards and modern typefaces over moments of the summer.
With these in mind, I designed a custom layout on Figma that could showcase the experiences that made their summer awesome.
The layout for the content had a cover, 3 different formats, and an end frame that teases the recruitment theme.
We also outreached to members interning across the country to show where their skills were taking them.
The reels combined three elements:
Career possibilities: A look inside internships at companies like Google.
Everyday experiences: Visually engaging day-in-the-life videos that made professional milestones feel personal and approachable in a variety of formats.
Connecting Cornerstone: Members’ reflections on how Cornerstone helped prepare them for their internships.
The goal was to help prospective members picture their own growth through the experiences of people already in the club.
Samudh: what I eat in a day @ google
Justin: life as an intern @ yale
Ashlie: a scroll format day in my life @ soulseated
An interesting approach we took with Justin’s video was using Instagram’s new feature: trial reels. We took three versions of Justin’s day-in-the-life reel at Yale using Instagram’s Trial Reels. After comparing their reach, we shared the best-performing version with our full audience.
We incorporated Cornerstone’s logo across our recruitment content and materials to build brand recognition through repeated exposure. These consistent touch points helped connect our member stories and campaign visuals to the organization behind them. By the time prospective members encountered us at tabling, the goal was for our club to feel familiar—turning recognition from their feed into a reason to stop and say hello.
07 recruitment rollout
getting the word to stick
With the hype generated for recruitment over summer, we began to pivot the hype towards action.
The rollout included a theme reveal, recruitment timeline, “What is CCC?”, executive board introductions, event reminders, and stories to pair with each event. Each piece answered a different question, from understanding the teams to finding an event’s time, location, and attire.
We also planned flyer versions and campus tabling materials so students could encounter the campaign beyond Instagram.
We shot and launched a concept teaser to trailer the fall recruitment theme.
We planned and executing a board photo shoot to have photos that played on the Post-it note theme, alongside handling all ends of the post-production for the photos we took.
TIMELINE FINAL
The timeline was also our recruitment flyer!
Here’s the front and back + shout out Bennett for printing out like a million of these!!!
INITIAL ITERATIONS OF WHAT IS CORNERSTONE
STICK TO CORNERSTONE
CONSULTANTS
DESIGNERS
TECH
PROVIDING PRO-BONO
CONSULTING SOLUTIONS TO
LOCAL SAN DIEGO BUSINESSES
FALL RECRUITMENT
WEEK 2
what is
Stick to
CORNERSTONE
CORNERSTONE?
STICK TO CORNERSTONE
CONSULTANTS
DESIGNERS
TECH
PROVIDING PRO-BONO
CONSULTING SOLUTIONS TO
LOCAL SAN DIEGO BUSINESSES
FALL RECRUITMENT
WEEK 2
Student-led Consulting Agency
who are we?
Helping local communities thrive.
Real-world experience for students.
Cornerstone
RECRUITMENT WEEK 2
JOIN OUR COMMUNITY
Timeline
Cornerstone
what do we do?
Design Team
FIND
@
CORNERSTONE
CONSULTANTS
FINAL ITERATIONS OF WHAT IS CORNERSTONE
CCC Board ‘26-’27
Meet the
Board
FALL ‘26 RECRUITMENT
Stick to
CORNERSTONE
who makes this all happen?
INITIAL ITERATIONS OF BOARD POST
Meet the
Board
FALL ‘26 RECRUITMENT
who makes this all happen?
FINAL BOARD POST
We asked each member to sign a post it note at the board shoot to give the post a personal touch.
We also asked every member to write their favorite part of cornerstone which we turned into a video showcasing why our members love cornerstone.
09 outcomes
what stuck?
Fall recruitment more than doubled turnout and applications, while likes, interactions, and shares on our posts nearly tripled.
We found:
100%+ increase in recruitment turnout and applications
Nearly 193% increase in likes, interactions, and shares
Approximately 39% follower growth over the summer and recruitment period.
Behind the results was a more organized creative process. Earlier planning reduced last-minute work and gave us time to refine a cohesive, on-brand campaign across social content and tabling materials.
10 reflection
reminder to self
This project helped me think about marketing as a connected experience, whether it’s someone’s first encounter with us in the summer to their decision to attend an event. It tested my organizational and management skills and is an experience I’ll take on with me for the rest of my life.
The strongest direction came from making Cornerstone’s opportunities tangible through its people. Member stories gave professional development a personal context, while the recruitment content helped students understand how to get involved.
Something I want to touch on next cycle are the stories of the local businesses and companies we have helped. I think it’s an aspect that isn’t highlighted enough in previous years, and something I find very special and unique about the club.
Now that we had all of the materials from the board photo shoot, we could use them in our designs we made prior to the shoot.
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Cornerstone Marketing
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SERVICE
VISUAL IDENTITY
ROLE
UX/UI
TEAM
ELISA LE
SOPHIA HO
TIMELINE
2026