Designing Tomorrow: Creative Strategies for Social Impact
Designing Tomorrow explores a new playbook for modern social impact leaders and brands to reach their true impact potential.
Why do some social impact brands thrive, while so many others fail to get traction, build support for their cause, and make meaningful progress? Imagine your impact with truly sustainable revenue and resources. With deeper community engagement and relationships. With more influence in your social impact category.
Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center, each episode dives into the strategies, mindsets, and behaviors top social impact brands use to play and win in the attention economy. Go beyond high-level concepts to specific tools and tactics you can use today.
Watch on YouTube or listen to new episodes each Tuesday.
Let’s design a better tomorrow, together.
Designing Tomorrow is a Cosmic Production. Learn more at https://designbycosmic.com/
Designing Tomorrow is a registered trademark of Design By Cosmic, Inc.
Designing Tomorrow: Creative Strategies for Social Impact
Storytelling Needs an Ecosystem
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The social impact sector has gotten very good at describing problems: white papers, statistics, annual reports filled with data on gaps and needs. But it hasn't built a system for telling stories that actually move people. Heather Mason spent 20 years producing the biggest convenings in the sector before building The Impact Lounge, a traveling hub that brings together funders, filmmakers, and creators at Sundance, Cannes, and beyond to build the narrative infrastructure social change has been missing.
Episode Highlights:
[02:15] Why narrative change is the most powerful lever for social change
[05:00] The social sector treats film as a tactic — Hollywood treats it as a system
[08:00] Marvelization: what world-building looks like for social impact
[12:30] You were hired to solve a problem — what if you were hired to create a vision?
[37:00] Why small teams should build, not buy — and let go of perfect
[45:00] The Skunkworks mindset: annoyingly positive in a hard year
Notable Quotes:
[03:45]: "Data can inform us, but only stories can move us." — Heather Mason
[13:00]: "If people get hired to focus on the problem, you're going to get problem-focused experiences, problem-focused communication, problem-focused white papers." — Heather Mason
Resources & Links:
- The Impact Lounge — theimpactlounge.com
- Caspian Agency — caspianagency.com
- Outrider Foundation Nuke Simulator — outrider.org
- Cosmic — designbycosmic.com
Hosted by Eric Ressler, Founder & Creative Director of Cosmic, with co-host Jonathan Hicken, Executive Director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center. New episodes every Tuesday.
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Thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.
