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Translate Culture: building brands and creating communities
Translate Culture is a dynamic growth agency that is partnering with a diverse range of exciting brands and taking its online success into the real world.
Read time: 3 mins Added: 03/10/25
Masibu Manima started off local, but his work with friends and family quickly caught the attention of the wider business community, turning his side hustle into a business that’s booming. Working with a range of consumer, media and personal brands, Translate Culture initially focused on paid social media marketing, but has evolved into providing brand partnerships, events and more.
The transformation from a digital marketing agency to a multi-purpose ‘growth agency’ is all part of Masibu’s plan to make sure his partner brands achieve their full potential. It all started in 2009, when Masibu won a prestigious place on a marketing graduate scheme for a big corporate brand, and he was quick to spot the early potential of digital marketing.
He started working with friends and family in his north London community, helping them build websites and grow their online businesses using search engine optimisation, and then blogging about his work.
A leap of faith
Masibu Manima Managing DirectorI built a reputation in my local area and, after a couple of my friends’ businesses took off, people started coming to me from further afield for advice. Then in 2019, the Evening Standard wrote an article on me, calling me a ‘digital expert’, and even more people started to reach out. I could see that the share of retail going online was growing and I decided to take a leap of faith and set out on my own to start Translate Culture.
Almost immediately, the pandemic hit, which looked like it could end the business before it even got started, but lockdown ultimately became something of a blessing in disguise, and Masibu’s e-commerce expertise proved to be his saving grace.
He said: “With our support, our clients started to grow their brands really quickly and that just boosted our reputation even further. Ever since, the business has skyrocketed and we've been working with bigger and better brands.”
Skyrocketing success
They include natural wellness brand Plantmade, which featured on the 2024 Sunday Times list of the 100 fastest growing businesses in the UK, skincare brand Ava Estell, which has now achieved revenues topping £10 million, and the quick service restaurant chain Wingstop, which will open 20 new sites during 2025.
And Translate Culture has grown with its clients, adding around £100,000 in revenue for every year it has been in business. But Masibu believes the business has the potential to accelerate that growth, working with larger corporations and working in new ways.
He added: “We're working to take our destiny into our own hands by offering services that aren't always reliant on tech platforms that we can’t control. We've realised it's better for us to expand our offer to our existing clients and continuing to deliver value for them, than to try and win lots of new clients.”
Masibu Manima Managing DirectorMost of our clients stay with us for years, because we continue to deliver value for them by helping them pivot into new opportunities. I believe that community marketing is the future; people don’t always want to be online, they want to connect to other people in real life.
Focused on growth
So, events have become an important string to Translate Culture’s bow, both to help create strong communities of consumers for its brands and to create a pipeline of new clients for the business. Translate Culture teamed up with Lloyds for a series of events to help raise the bank’s profile among Black business owners, for example.
Masibu said: “Lloyds wanted to connect with more fast-growing Black consumer brands that were hard to reach. It did some research that found only 12% of Black business owners turn to banks when seeking guidance and support1.
“Together, we’ve worked really hard to try to change that and it’s been a very productive relationship, including three events over three years.”
In 2025, Masibu’s immediate ambitions include achieving seven figures in revenue, winning more enterprise clients and hiring more senior staff members to handle the day-to-day running of the business, so he can focus on growth. He said: “It’s also important to me that we are able to nurture our people; I would love Translate Culture to be the agency that all the best young talent want to work with. Ultimately, I want Translate Culture to be the most trusted partner for the fastest growing brands in Britain.”