Eddie Cota is an arts and cultural strategist in Los Angeles, and founder of creative marketing agency Champion City. Over the past 12 years, he has developed some of the most innovative programs with brands, nonprofits, and festivals that have shaped the cultural landscape of the city.
His career started in radio marketing for pop station 102.7 KIIS-FM in 2006, and was later recruited by the first bilingual radio station on the West Coast, Mega 96.3. Mega represented a new frontier of marketing to a bilingual audience, which paved the way for several new media networks that wanted to reach the crossover Latino demographic.
In 2008, he became Artistic Director of the Levitt Pavilion for the Performing Arts in Pasadena, a non-profit dedicated to providing free access to the arts in underserved communities through a summer concert series. He also acquired programming responsibilities for sister organization the Levitt Pavilion MacArthur Park in 2010. Over the course of six seasons, Cota programmed 500 total concerts that served an audience of more than 600,000. The LA Times profiled Cota in both 2011 and 2012 for his innovative multicultural programming that made both Pasadena and MacArthur Park cultural destinations in Los Angeles. The program was recognized nationally as a musical tastemaker for breaking emerging talent and giving international artists their U.S. debuts. To this day, several artists that were seen at the Levitt Pavilion first are being discovered by major festivals and PAC’s, and winning Grammy Awards.
His work at the Levitt Pavilion led to energy drink Red Bull hiring Cota as a consultant to lead their new Hispanic marketing initiatives and develop more music programs. In 2013, he became the Cultural Programmer of creative agency Imprint Projects, where he developed cutting-edge programs and content platforms for clients such as Sonos, Levi’s, Virgin, Moog, Google and more.
In the Fall of 2015, Cota founded creative marketing agency Champion City to focus on clients that are interested in making a cultural, social, or creative impact through the arts. In 2017, he was recognized as one of CSQ Magazine’s NextGen Top 10 leaders in the category of “philanthropy, arts and culture.”