01
Decide who, and in what language
Choosing languages from population data, finding the sub-audiences inside a language group, and spotting barriers your message cannot solve.
Most campaigns aimed at diverse audiences fail quietly
They do not offend anyone. They do not generate complaints. They just do not land, and afterward nobody can say exactly why.
Usually the answer is upstream of the creative. The wrong languages were chosen from assumption instead of data. The headline was translated when it should have been transcreated. The trusted messengers were recruited the week of launch instead of during planning. Performance was measured in aggregate, so the one segment that worked got averaged into the ones that did not.
None of that shows up in a creative review. All of it shows up in the results.
Six sections, 26 checks, no filler
02
Write it so it survives translation
Transcreation versus translation, reading level in every language, and why Spanish copy breaks English layouts.
03
Make the creative look like the audience
Casting and setting, when cultural review has to happen, and testing with actual community members.
04
Make it accessible, in every language
Alt text in the right language, why auto-captions fail, and the Section 508 requirements that apply to every language version separately.
05
Get it delivered by someone they trust
Trusted messenger timing, what a partner toolkit actually needs to contain, and channel mix by audience.
06
Measure by segment, or learn nothing
The measurement mistake that hides your best-performing audience.
From the checklist
Language performance is not constant across channels
In a 2025 statewide Virginia Department of Health campaign, we ran parallel English and Spanish creative across display banners and Meta.
Spanish outperformed English on display, on both engagement and cost per click. English outperformed Spanish on Meta.
Same campaign. Same audiences. Same creative team. Opposite results depending on the channel.
A team measuring in aggregate would have concluded that one language “worked better,” cut the other, and been wrong on one of the two channels.
The full breakdown, including the cost per click difference and the three audience segments that outperformed everyone’s predictions, is on the last page of the checklist.
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Built from campaigns for the Virginia Department of Health, Virginia Department of Social Services, Fairfax County, and NIOSH-CDC.
6 Davey Awards, four consecutive years · Inc. 5000 · SWaM certified, Commonwealth of Virginia · Since 2007