It’s December 14th 2007, and a 22-year-old David Wadsworth has just completed his first new business meeting for his fledgling agency, Cornerstone.
“It was with a property company in Wakefield called Rosa Homes,” he says. “I think I charged them 90 quid for an A5 press ad.”
He returned to his parents’ attic in Oldham, his first office, and duly set about fulfilling the order.
Seventeen years on, and David is sitting opposite me in Cornerstone’s current home, a 6,000 sq ft former soft play warehouse on the outskirts of Oldham (the wifi network still bears its former name ‘Cheeky Chimps’).
The one-man band has become 35-strong. The client roster now includes the likes of long-term accounts Cancer Research, Pyrocam and North West Ambulance Service, as well as businesses in the Netherlands, Japan and the United States.
And Cornerstone is absolutely flying, growing an astonishing 54% in 2024 to surpass revenues of £3million for the first time.
Surely, with bigger agencies likely circling, Wadsworth must have half an eye on selling up?
“None whatsoever,” he replies emphatically.
‘Marketing is the cornerstone’
Growing up in what he describes as a “rough” part of Oldham, Wadsworth had a traditional upbringing courtesy of his older parents (his dad, a draughtsman for a truck company, was 52 when he arrived in 1985).
His first exposure to the industry came as an eight-year-old working for his uncle’s print business, and by 14, when his uncle fell ill with cancer, he was almost running the business, juggling work with his GCSE studies.
After a first in marketing from the University of Huddersfield, he had a short stint at a pharmaceuticals company before a disastrous few months at an unnamed agency in Greater Manchester.
“I loved the field, but hated the ethics that sat behind some of the decision-making and some of the ways that clients were perceived, treated and spoken to,” he said.
Fuelled by a conviction that he could do things better, Wadsworth set up shop alone, naming his agency after one of his university projects.
“I always see marketing as the cornerstone of a solid business,” he explains. “If you’ve not got that right, it’s going to come tumbling down.”
After a couple of years working out of his parents’ house, he moved into his own place and gradually the business grew. His first hire was Sarah Smethurst, soon followed by Nicola Adamson, and both remain with the company – as Head of Creative Services and Senior Graphic Designer respectively – more than 15 years later.
“Six months of my life that I’ll never get back”
Fast forward to 2025, and the business is in full-on growth mode. That is no doubt due in part to the ambition that Wadsworth showed when he opted to move to Cornerstone’s headquarters back in 2019.
The cavernous warehouse needed a full refit to transform it from a soft play centre into an office – but the agency’s investment of £250,000 was around £100,000 short of the actual cost.
So Wadsworth stepped in. “It was six months of my life that I’ll never get back. I used to finish a busy day job, turn up here at about six or seven at night, renovate until 11 or midnight, then do the same again every weekend.”
The office today is very smartly finished, with rooms called Bernbach and Hershey a nod to two of the original ‘Mad Men’.
Cornerstone is a full-service agency, covering design, digital, web and PR, and Wadsworth’s determination to manage the quality of the agency’s output is evident from the systems, processes and culture that’s been formed over the years within the agency. This is further backed up by the giant rolls roller installed in a ground-floor production room.
“We were using loads of signage providers for campaigns and they just didn’t have the same focus on quality that we did,” he says, “so in the end I decided to bring it in-house. It means our large format print production is now flawless at all times and complements our full marketing mix right down to an end printed product.”
Wadsworth’s approach to running his agency is refreshingly simple.
“All I’m bothered about is doing great work for great clients and actually making an impact on them,” he says.
“A lot of our industry seems so focused on the big names and the big brands. I’ve seen that vanity, and don’t get me wrong there’s an appeal to that, but we’ve worked for big brands over the years and while some of them have been brilliant, some have actually been really horrible to work with.
“For me, it’s important that I enjoy my job and that the team enjoys their job too. Whether it’s the biggest brand globally or the smallest one locally, the thing that’s really important to me is just adding value to them.”
He singles out Pyrocalm, a pharmaceuticals company, as an example of the difference that Cornerstone can make.
“They came to us disgruntled with their current agency, who were charging a not insignificant amount for what really distilled down to an infographic and a couple of product placements in magazines.
“We realised that what they were lacking was a marketing strategy to take the brand from a new-to-market brand to a real challenger. And over the last three years, it’s grown to a multi million pound player, growing strongly within the marketplace. They’ve got a brilliant sales team, but we’ve driven their overall brand exposure with a fully integrated campaign to a very targeted market.”
“Some people will despise me”
Culture plays an absolutely critical role for Wadsworth.
“By the time someone goes past two years with Cornerstone, you know that they have the right ethics, ethos and mentality,” he says.
“The team we have now are perfectly aligned to our culture, and the beauty of that is that we’ve got a lot of like-minded people that care about doing a great job for our clients. They don’t take nonsense and bullshit and really want to deliver.”
Admitting that he is a “pedant for quality”, Wadsworth says he holds his team accountable to high standards.
“I’m unapologetic in that some people will despise me. There’s been people that have moved on from the company, and I like that. They despise me because they don’t want to meet that standard. Well, they’re not the right person for us.”
One of the team who definitely subscribes to the Cornerstone way is Nigel Wareing, PR and copywriter.
After a 40-year career in regional newspapers, Wareing ended up working in various roles for John Lewis after being made redundant by MEN Media. After spotting the vacancy at Cornerstone, he applied and is now in his fifth year at the agency.
He says that while everyone at Cornerstone is good at their job, it’s the way they work together that elevates the agency.
“It’s like a football manager who chooses his players judiciously so that they gel together,” he says.
“We’ve all been chosen because we’re good at what we do, but we’ve not been chosen just for that reason. It’s because we’ve got the right mindset, the right attitude, and we come together and fit in.”
“This place is more than just a revenue generator”
After the prodigious growth of last year, 2025 has started in a similar vein for Cornerstone.
“We must have had about eight or nine proposals out within the first two weeks of January, with interest coming from left, right and centre,” says Wadsworth.
He’s forecasting another 20 to 30% growth this year, although as he is keen to point out, numbers are not the be-all and end-all.
“This place is more than just a business or a revenue generator,” he adds. “I’ve spent 17 years throwing money back into it. I don’t have a pension. It’s all about just making it the best it can be, and doing what we’re good at, which is working with leading and challenger brands alike, and adding value where it matters.”
