How picking a niche in cause based marketing led to success for this cosmic entrepreneur.
28 Jan 2026 · 0 min
Eric Ressler, founder of Cosmic, a Santa Cruz creative agency, explains why focusing on social-impact organizations helped him stand out in a field of 40,000 marketing agencies. His work with Stem from Dance reached Black and Brown girls into STEM, and his branding for Let's Green California helped pass a bill into law.
The Unnoticed Entrepreneur podcast is sponsored by Prowly, the all in one tool for PR experts.
Today with me, Jim James here in the UK, we go to Santa Cruz, California to meet Eric Ressler who is the founder and CEO of a company called Cosmic.
In just the US over 40,000 marketing focused agencies out there that are serving various types of clients. We realized that in order for us to really scale our organization and grow, not necessarily in terms of size, but in terms of our impact, that we needed to find a niche of our own. Cosmic is a social impact creative agency. So we work with organizations that exist in order to create a social impact as their primary mission. I think the first example would be an organization called Stem from Dance that they're based out of New York, primarily trying to help reach black and brown girls who traditionally maybe don't have interest or access to STEM based education in the way that they would need to be prepared for a STEM based career. So it's a really cool approach and we helped Stem from Dance with Brand Refresh and building out a new website and digital infrastructure to help scale their program and to generate more interest and funding for the work that they doing. Another example that's more in the climate action space would be an organization called let's Green California. And really the idea is that they're creating legislation and a grassroots movement to help push California's role as a climate action leader even further, even faster. And so we helped them with their brand, their overall messaging strategy, and then building out some digital infrastructure that really allowed them to not just generate support and a movement for the campaign, but ultimately led to them publishing a bill that they're able to get signed into law here in California, which is really exciting. I think that creating a visual identity is unique to every organization. Certainly there might be some trends within social impact that we follow, but I think the way that we really think about branding is understanding the audience that our organization is serving and trying to reach deeply so that we can create a brand that resonates with that audience. So we actually tapped into some of the kind of nostalgic good vibes of California in the past. So it might be, you know, that there's some trends within, let's say environmentalism, we might actually go against those trends intentionally to create something that stands out, that's different, that's bold, that captures people's attention.
Now I'd just like to mention our sponsor for this show, the Unnoticed Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by a company called Prowley. Prowley is an all in one software for leveraging your public relations activities, you can boost the media relations game for your business, find media contacts, send out press releases, and get more coverage while saving time and money on everyday tasks. Check it out prowley. Com.
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