How to plan Cardiff beauty creator campaigns in Welsh and English

What to take away

Why bilingual Welsh and English briefs change campaign planning

A bilingual brief is not one campaign with a translation bolted on. It is two content plans sharing a budget, a creator and a set of claims. Plan for both from the start and the Welsh version stops looking like an afterthought.

Welsh language content changes what a creator can say. Some beauty terms have settled Welsh equivalents, others do not, and creators often code-switch mid-sentence. That is normal speech in Wales, not sloppiness. Your brief should say whether code-switching is welcome or whether you want a fully Welsh script.

Language balance affects casting. A creator with a large English following may have a small Welsh one, and the reverse happens too. Before you choose, define who you are trying to reach through proper target audience work rather than follower counts.

Timing shifts as well. Welsh scripts need review by someone who speaks the language, and that review sits in the critical path. Build in an extra approval round instead of compressing the edit.

Review ownership is part of the plan. Book the Welsh reviewer before you lock the cut, and agree in writing who owns the Welsh version after publication. That rule matters for reuse, paid boosting and any public sector report.

It also stops the Welsh cut drifting when a creator swaps a product after approval. Keep a dated copy with the brief, and use the same wording for every creator in the campaign. If you work with several creators, the same wording avoids a separate review path for each contract.

What a bilingual brief must state

A brief that leaves language to the creator will produce whatever the creator finds easiest. State the language of the spoken script, the on-screen text, the captions and the call to action. Those four can differ.

State who signs off the Welsh. If nobody on your team reads Welsh, name the reviewer before the contract is signed, not after the first cut arrives.

State whether the Welsh version is a translation or a transcreation. A literal translation of a beauty script often reads stiffly. A transcreation costs more but sounds like a person talking.

State the disclosure wording in both languages. We come back to that in section five.

Planning Cardiff creator audiences and Welsh language reach

Cardiff and the surrounding valleys hold the largest concentration of beauty creators in Wales. The city has a dense creator scene, agency presence and a young population that brands find easy to reach through paid and organic social.

The Creative Wales directory lists Cardiff creator agencies and freelancers, and each creator's media kit should give a follower split by language.

Welsh language reach does not map neatly onto Cardiff, though. The highest proportions of Welsh speakers sit in north and west Wales, in areas such as Gwynedd, Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire. A Cardiff creator with a national Welsh language following can reach those areas, but a Cardiff-only English creator will not.

This is the planning tension. Cardiff gives you production convenience and volume. Welsh language reach gives you a different, often older and more dispersed audience. A single campaign can serve both, but only if you accept that the two audiences behave differently.

Audience research matters more here than in a single-language market, because the overlap between Welsh-speaking and English-speaking followers of the same creator is unknown until you ask. Running audience research with a handful of creators will tell you more than any platform estimate.

Platform data is thin on Welsh language content. Most tools classify by location, not by language, so a Welsh language post from a Cardiff creator may be counted in the same bucket as an English one. Treat platform language tags as indicative only.

Where Welsh language audiences actually sit

Think in three bands. Cardiff, Newport and the south Wales valleys give you scale and easy logistics. West Wales gives you strong Welsh language density with smaller absolute numbers. North Wales gives you the strongest language density and the longest travel times.

If your objective is language reach, weight the brief towards west and north Wales creators, even if production is based in Cardiff. If your objective is volume and retail footfall, Cardiff and the south east will usually serve you better.

Translation and subtitling costs for Welsh language content

The honest answer on cost is that it depends on volume, turnaround and whether you want translation or transcreation. Welsh is a less commonly requested language than French or German, so the pool of specialist beauty translators is smaller and rates reflect that.

As a working estimate, English to Welsh written translation is typically quoted at 10p to 15p per word, with a minimum charge per job. Welsh subtitling is typically quoted at £4 to £8 per minute of finished video.

These are typical UK agency ranges as at 2024, not a quote, and depend on volume, turnaround and subject matter. Cymen and Trosol are two Welsh translation suppliers that quote per project. Ask both for a per-word and per-minute figure on the same script. ProZ.com community rates offer a live benchmark, but treat user-reported figures as indicative.

Subtitling is usually priced per minute of finished video. A short-form video of under a minute sits at the lower end, and rates rise with turnaround speed and with the number of versions required. Burned-in subtitles cost more than a subtitle file.

Voiceover is the most expensive route. A Welsh voice artist, a studio and a director add up quickly, and availability in Wales is limited, so book early.

A worked example

Suppose you commission four short videos from two Cardiff creators, each video under a minute, and you want Welsh subtitles plus Welsh captions on all four.

The translation and subtitling line will typically be a small fraction of the total creator fee, but it is the line most often forgotten at the briefing stage.

Creative Industries Council support and funding context for Wales

The Creative Industries Council is a UK-level body that brings together government and industry to shape policy for the creative sectors, including advertising, design and digital content. It does not hand out grants to individual campaigns.

Its value to you is context rather than cash. Policy attention on the creative industries affects skills funding, tax reliefs and the wider business environment that creators work in. If you are building a business case for Welsh language content, that national backdrop is worth citing.

For hard numbers on sector employment and the value of tax reliefs, the government publishes Creative industry annual tax relief statistics - GOV.UK, which is a reasonable starting point when you need a defensible figure for a board paper.

Funding for Wales campaigns more often comes through bodies such as Creative Wales, the Welsh Government's creative industries agency, and the Arts Council of Wales. Arts Council of Wales National Lottery Project Grants ask applicants how the project will support the Welsh language, and its Welsh Language Standards set the wider duty.

Public sector campaigns in Wales frequently carry a Welsh language expectation attached to their own funding conditions, which is why agency briefs in Wales so often arrive already bilingual.

If you are a brand rather than a public body, do not assume funding is available. Assume instead that a bilingual approach may be a condition of working with Welsh public partners, and price it accordingly.

What this means for your budget

Treat any external support as a bonus, not a foundation. Build the campaign budget so it stands without grant funding, then treat any support as margin.

Keep records of what you spent on Welsh language production. If a future funding round asks for evidence of Welsh language output, you will already have it.

Briefing creators on language balance and disclosure in both languages

Disclosure is where bilingual campaigns most often go wrong. The CAP Code requires that marketing communications are identifiable as such, and the ASA publishes the Advertising codes - ASA | CAP that set out those labelling duties.

If your audience reads Welsh, a disclosure in English only may not be clear to them. The safe approach is a label in both languages, placed where it is seen before or with the content, not buried under a fold.

This is not a translation exercise. It is a compliance exercise. Write the Welsh disclosure with the same care as the English one and have it checked.

A written disclosure policy saves time here, because creators can be pointed to one document rather than given a fresh instruction per campaign. It also protects you when a creator works across several brands in the same month.

How to brief the language balance

Use a one-page language brief. State the spoken language for each video, whether code-switching is allowed, and the language of on-screen text and captions. Name the Welsh reviewer and the sign-off deadline.

Say whether the Welsh version is a translation or a transcreation. Supply the disclosure wording in both languages. Attach the brief to the creator contract and version it.

Common briefing mistakes in Wales

Treating Welsh as a subtitle afterthought produces content that feels like a translation. Welsh-speaking audiences notice immediately.

Assuming every Cardiff creator speaks Welsh is wrong, and assuming none of them do is equally wrong. Ask.

Letting the creator write the Welsh disclosure themselves invites inconsistency across a campaign. Supply the wording.

Measuring a bilingual campaign without double counting reach

Reach is the number of distinct people who saw something. If you add the reach of an English video to the reach of its Welsh version, you are counting people twice unless the two audiences are genuinely separate, which they rarely are.

Start with deduplication. Ask each platform for unique reach where it is available, and where it is not, treat the sum of the two versions as an upper bound rather than a headline figure.

The IAB UK publishes IAB UK | Measurement hub guidance on digital measurement standards, which is the sensible reference point when you are agreeing metrics with a media agency or a public sector client.

Agree the reporting method before the campaign starts. Retrofitting a deduplication method after publication is difficult and rarely convincing.

A practical measurement method

The wider measurement explained guidance for UK brand campaigns applies here too, with the added step of separating languages in the tracker.

What good bilingual reporting looks like

A good report shows English reach, Welsh reach and the estimated unique total. It shows engagement per language and any difference in sentiment or comment language.

It also shows cost per unique person reached for each language version. That figure is the one that tells you whether the Welsh version earned its budget.

Common questions

Do I need Welsh language content if my campaign is based in Cardiff?

Not always. Cardiff has a large English-speaking audience. If your brief includes Welsh language objectives or a public sector partner, you will need it.

How much should I budget for Welsh translation?

Plan on 10p to 15p per word for translation and £4 to £8 per minute for subtitling, as typical UK agency ranges. Get quotes from Cymen and Trosol, because the spread between suppliers is wide.

Does the Creative Industries Council fund campaigns?

No. It is a policy body. Funding for Wales campaigns usually comes through Creative Wales, the Arts Council of Wales or your own budget.

Can a creator write the Welsh disclosure themselves?

They can, but you should not rely on it. Supply approved wording in both languages so every post in the campaign matches.

How do I avoid double counting reach?

Use unique reach per platform where available, keep Welsh and English posts separate in your tracker, and label any combined figure as an estimate.

Is code-switching acceptable in a Welsh language campaign?

Yes, if you say so in the brief. Natural mixing is common in Wales, but some public sector briefs expect a fully Welsh script.