If you have been riding the Metro through Foggy Bottom or catching a bus across the DMV recently, you may have noticed something new: GW School of Business, making its presence felt across the city it calls home.
What you might not know is the students who helped make it happen.
For the school’s new out-of-home advertising campaign, now appearing across Metro stations and buses throughout the region, the school made a deliberate decision to involve GW Business students in the creative process. The result is a campaign that carries the fingerprints of the community it represents.
A competition that started it all
Preston Hawks, senior multimedia designer at the GW School of Business, helped set the creative direction for the project and he wanted students at the center of it.
"When we set out to design this campaign, we knew it had to be a true community effort," Hawks said. "We kicked things off with a friendly design competition where students were guided by the university's new brand assets and explored how we could integrate them into the school's messaging."
That competition drew in students like Audra Holfoth, a junior studying marketing, who helped shape the visual identity of the campaign while also conducting competitor analysis and organizing photo shoots, work that directly mirrored what she's learning in her GW classes.
"Being invited into the creative process as a student was a special experience," Holfoth said. "I got to take concepts my professors talk about and put them into real practice."
From the classroom to the campaign
Nicholas Botti, a master's student in business analytics, brought a data-driven lens to the project. Drawing on market research skills developed in his GW coursework, he helped run focus groups with prospective students to understand what they're actually looking for when choosing a business school.
What he found shaped the campaign's core message: students want meaningful relationships, real career access, and a location that works as hard as they do. Those insights became the taglines now visible across the DMV, including "Steps Away from Global Opportunity" and "Steps Away from Future Connections."
"One of the most interesting parts was predicting where the ads should be placed to attract the most attention from commuters and prospective students," Botti said. "It was a real opportunity to research the customer journey, a concept we often hear about in class. All of the research I did was ultimately used by A&G, the agency that handled the media placement.”
Shooting a citywide campaign
Valeria Garaycoa, an international business major, contributed to the campaign’s visual development, now featured across Washington, D.C.
Garaycoa assisted on shoots, coordinating with the videographer and student volunteers to keep production running smoothly.
“I learned how much preparation and collaboration goes into producing professional content,” she said. “It was my first time on a production set, and I even appeared in the campaign video for a few seconds, which was a full-circle moment.” Garaycoa said, noting that courses like Consumer Behavior shaped her approach to layout and messaging.
“It’s given me a real story for interviews and skills I’ve carried into every professional opportunity since.”
A moment of pride for the whole community
The campaign launches at a meaningful moment for the school. With Dean Sevin Yeltekin bringing a renewed vision to GW Business, the ads represent more than a marketing push. They're a statement about where the school is headed, told through the voices of the students living that journey right now.
"This campaign is hopefully a beautiful example of what happens when our students, leadership and staff work side-by-side to tell the GW Business story," Hawks said.
The ads are already appearing across Metro stations and buses throughout the region, with a full rollout in the Foggy Bottom station beginning April 20.
What made it possible
The students’ experience was built on the university’s comprehensive brand refresh, which launched in December of 2025. GW’s Office of Communications and Marketing led the year-long refresh, in partnership with the GW community, to ensure that the new brand promise of “Proximity and Progress” and creative expression communicate the university’s unique attributes.
“It’s exciting to see the GW Business marketing team and students use the university brand refresh to create a campaign that tells a compelling story about the school,” said Julie Zito, Associate Vice President, Marketing. “One of our goals in working with the entire GW community in its creation was that it would be authentic to all of the stories across the university. And it makes me smile every time I see their work on my Red Line commute!”
See It? Share It.
If you spot the campaign on your commute or around the city, snap a photo and tag it #StepsAwayGWSB. The most-liked photo wins a GW swag prize pack.