CUSD : Marketing Fall 2017 Recruitment

Sharing our Work with the Cornell Community

At the start of every semester, CUSD (Cornell University Sustainable Design) looks to revamp its roster with new members who care about making tangible impact on the international community through creative, sustainable design and strategy.

As our new head of Marketing & Communications, I was able to get hands on experience with currating a media roll out that would engage potential members with the CUSD brand.

Content & Marketing Material: Promo Video

Our marketing team had began filming & preparing a video for this upcoming recruitment last semester but never finished the video. After reviewing the footage, I saw a lot of potential in the excitement the content could bring to my Cornell peers if it was shortened and right to the point. I made some adjustments and formed a pitch that tried to get right to the point of what CUSD does and why students should join.

Content & Marketing Material: Cover Photos & Posts

For the general cover photos, I stuck true to CUSD’s visual brand identity while also trying to be creative by adjusting the content (replacing each team’s logo with it’s work in the left cover photo as opposed to the right).

To create individual team cards, I interviewed each team lead on their needs for the upcoming semester as well as a short snipet of what a new member could expect if they were to work on each CUSD team:

ECO Fest & Water Bottle Giveaway

Aside from our more traditional content, I was able to take advantage of our invitation to ECO Fest and coordinate a give away promotion to generate greater buzz.

Plan & Approach

After creating the content, I set out a plan to distribute it to our team leads and their members so our event could gain increasing traction as recruitment neared:

1. Each CUSD member will change their cover photo to“covverphoto1” two days before the first information session and “coverphoto2” the day before
2. For more specified targeting, each CUSD team can post the short card that’s relevant to their team to recruit openly on Facebook or in any Facebook groups.
3. All CUSD members will share the short promotion video
4. If you are a team lead, please also get your members to also share the cover photo, video, and your team’s image
5. As part of recruitment and ECO fest, we have a short CUSD water bottle raffle draw to give students a better understanding of our work with sustainable design and how we take action to realize ideas.

Application & Results

Prior to our first recruitment event:

1. Our short promotion video had +2000 views
2. Each team had several students who shared their own team cards on Facebook and in specific groups, exposing our brand and work to both larger & more specific students (e.g. engineering)
3. As it got closer to our event, we ramped up engagement through personal yet coordinated posts of the main coverphoto with short snippets of our own, valuable experiences
4. The ECO fest mission also had a great turn out as we were not only able to pitch to students who cared about sustainability, but also incentivize them to come to our information session with our give away.

Tony is currently a rising Junior majoring in Fine Arts and minoring in Business at Cornell University, Ithaca NY. He recently interned in Washington D.C. over the summer as a Product Design and Marketing Intern for Agnes.io

He can be reached at:
www.therealit.com
dl548@cornell.edu
607–379–7759