about us
Cousin Media specializes in creative services for brands and organizations in the outdoor industry.
About Cousin Media
Cousin Media started in 2020 in the heart of the pandemic lockdown up in beautiful Truckee, California. We’re proud to be a part of the demographic our work is targeted towards. So we’re able to create work that we know the community and industry will be attracted towards and convert to sales.
Cousin Media is now located in Reno, Nevada. Still just 10 minutes from the mountains, but now has easy access to studio space, equipment rentals, as well as talent to pull from for projects.
Cousin Media may only be a few years old now, but Vinnie Zacha-Herthel has more than a decade creating content in the industry.
The name “Cousin Media” stems from Vinnie’s time at Sugar Bowl Ski Resort. At the beginning of his career, Vinnie would sign off his snow reports with “- Cousin Vinnie”
Ski patrol, mountain ops, as well as many of the execs would just call him “Cousin” and from there, the name stuck.
About Vinnie Zacha-Herthel
Most kids at a young age dream of being a Firefighter, Doctor or an Astronaut, well I pretty much knew that I wanted to be involved in the Action Sports Industry. I’ve been in the outdoor industry since the moment I was old enough to get a work permit. Starting out as a grom in the back of the shop unpacking and building bikes at Ken’s Bike and Ski at the age of 15. From there, I pocketed enough money to race on the Davis High School Snowboard team. In addition to working in the shop, I spent time hand printing shirts for myself and any classmate I could convince to buy one.
From there I went on to Major in Graphic Design at California State University, Chico with minors in Photography and Illustration.
After graduation, I started my career in the marketing department at Sugar Bowl Ski Resort as a snow reporter. After an opportunity to shoot photos for the resort arose, I proved that I could provide a quality product, and soon after added “resort photographer” to my job title. Many other hats were added onto my role over the years including managing social media, email marketing, graphic design, and a boatload of other miscellaneous marketing duties.
I reinvested most of my spare income into adding more photo/video equipment to improve the quality of work I could create.
In addition to working at Sugar Bowl, I spent many nights and weekends moonlighting on freelance projects. Building up enough work to merit founding a company (Cousin Media) to place all the projects under.
Behind the scenes photo of Vinnie by Banta.Visuals. At Sugar Bowl Resort during the opening of the Palisades.