Advertising students create bilingual branding for Welsh Brew Tea

4 December, 2024

Advertising student Sanchari Mukhopadhyay

Advertising students at the University of South Wales (USW) have helped create bilingual designs for Welsh Brew Tea – a family-owned business that sells 60 million teabags every year.

The project saw the first year students tasked with producing a bilingual advert for bus stops and billboards around Wales, giving them experience of working with a client on a real life design brief.

As part of the task, the students were supported by USW’s Welsh medium employability team with a brainstorming session on how to use the Welsh language in their designs.

Part-funded by the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol, the team encourages Welsh-speaking students continue to use and improve their Welsh skills while at university, and helps to provide them with the employability skills required in the workplace.

They then pitched their ideas to Sarah France, CEO of Welsh Brew Tea; Lee Thomas, Course Leader for Advertising; Sian Harris, senior lecturer in Welsh medium employability; and Steven Wright, Head of Fashion, Marketing and Photography.

Najla Ogabi, 26, is one of the first year Advertising students who took part in the project. She used a Welsh dragon in her design for the new brand, after researching symbols of Wales and the national flag.

She said: “Working with Welsh Brew Tea was an amazing opportunity, and I truly enjoyed the experience. I sampled the tea and immediately fell in love with the taste, which inspired me to convey Welsh pride and tradition in my design.

“I used an image of a natural reservoir in the background, showing the beauty of Wales, its water and its landscape. It also gives an organic feel, which I thought would resonate with Welsh and non-Welsh tea lovers who appreciate the brand’s environmentally friendly ethic.”

Sarah France, CEO of Welsh Brew Tea, said: “Working with the Advertising students on this project was a beneficial experience for Welsh Brew Tea, and hopefully helped the students get a good insight of working with a successful brand.

“The feedback they provided enabled us to think about different ways of marketing our products and raise brand awareness, and their depth of research was evident throughout their presentations.”

Sanchari Mukhopadhyay (main image, above) also took part in the live brief. Originally from India, 20-year-old Sanchari grew up in Russia and enjoyed learning some Welsh phrases that she could include in her design.

She said: “As an international student, it was really interesting to learn more about the tea culture in Wales. I was surprised to see that Welsh Brew teabags are round – compared to rectangular ones in Russia – which inspired me to make a character out of the teabag.

“I focused on the company’s brand mission which is that the tea is made especially for Welsh (soft) water, and decided to keep the theme of my design fun and animated, targeting a younger audience. This project was a great learning experience, which I’m very grateful for.”

Lee Thomas, Course Leader for Advertising, added: “This project has helped the students to understand how valuable it is to have a Welsh speaking colleague in a team, to advise on whether a sentence in English can also have the same meaning in Welsh. They have learned that you cannot rely on machine translation, as the risks of creating a sentence which doesn’t have the same meaning are great, and could cause significant reputational damage to a brand.”

Lee is now planning further projects with the Welsh medium employability team to continue providing a bilingual perspective for his students.