Catapult Creative: Cardiff's Agency for Brands That Want to Be Noticed

Tucked into the creative quarter of Cardiff's city centre, Catapult Creative has spent the past decade helping brands across Wales and beyond find their voice, sharpen their visual identity, and reach audiences in ways that stick. Founded in 2014 by former agency creatives who wanted to build something leaner and more collaborative, the agency has grown from a three-person studio to a team of over thirty strategists, designers, copywriters, and account managers.

The agency's client list spans sectors that rarely overlap: heritage tourism boards, fintech startups, independent food brands, and public sector organisations. What unites these clients is a shared need for communications that feel genuine rather than formulaic. Catapult's founders built the agency on a simple premise: that good creative work comes from understanding a client's world deeply, not from applying templates.

A Different Kind of Agency Culture

Walk into Catapult's offices on a typical morning and you'll find a whiteboard covered in campaign sketches next to a wall of printed mood boards. Meetings tend to be short. The culture skews toward doing rather than presenting, and toward testing ideas in the real world rather than polishing decks endlessly. Staff are encouraged to flag problems early and propose solutions rather than wait for direction.

This approach has shaped the kind of people who thrive at Catapult. The agency looks for professionals who are self-motivated, genuinely curious about how audiences think, and comfortable with the occasional ambiguity that comes from working across multiple accounts simultaneously. Hierarchy is minimal. Junior team members regularly present to clients, and senior staff still get involved in production work when the project demands it.

"We never wanted to be the kind of agency where senior people disappear after the pitch. Everyone here makes things. That's the deal, and it keeps the work honest." — Rhian Maddox, Co-Founder

The Work

Catapult Creative operates across three core areas: brand development, campaign strategy and delivery, and content production. Brand work ranges from full identity creation for new businesses to repositioning exercises for established organisations looking to modernise. Campaign work covers everything from integrated digital launches to localised print and outdoor advertising. Content production, which has grown significantly in the last few years, includes photography, video, social media content, and editorial writing.

One of the agency's most recognised projects involved a rebrand and awareness campaign for a Welsh food cooperative that had struggled to compete with larger national distributors. Catapult developed a visual identity rooted in the cooperative's rural origins, paired it with a content series featuring the farmers and producers behind each product, and rolled out a digital campaign that drove a measurable increase in direct-to-consumer sales within six months. The project won a Creative Circle regional award and brought the agency to wider attention.

More recently, Catapult has worked with several Cardiff-based tech companies to develop employer branding and recruitment marketing, a growing niche that reflects the agency's ability to adapt to where demand is heading. The team has also taken on public health communication briefs, producing campaigns that required sensitivity, clarity, and a strong grasp of behavioural insight.

Cardiff as a Creative Home

Catapult's founders are vocal advocates for Cardiff's creative sector. The city has seen a steady influx of talent over the past decade, driven in part by lower living costs compared to London and Bristol, a growing number of creative studios and production companies, and the presence of BBC Wales and other media organisations. Catapult has hired graduates from Cardiff Metropolitan University and the University of South Wales, and several of the agency's current senior staff joined as interns or juniors.

The agency also runs an annual programme with local colleges, offering short placements to students considering careers in design, marketing, or communications. These placements are structured to give participants real project experience rather than observation, and several have led to full-time roles.

Looking Ahead

Catapult Creative is in a phase of measured growth. The agency has expanded its digital capabilities, bringing in specialists in paid media, analytics, and UX to complement its core creative team. There are plans to open a smaller satellite studio in Bristol, though the Cardiff office will remain the agency's home and centre of gravity.

For anyone considering a role at Catapult, the appeal is relatively straightforward: varied work, a team that values craft and directness, and the chance to shape campaigns from concept through to delivery. It is not an agency for people who want to specialise narrowly or work on a single account for months at a time. It suits those who enjoy range, who learn quickly, and who find satisfaction in seeing their ideas reach real audiences.

In a market crowded with agencies making similar promises, Catapult Creative distinguishes itself through consistency. The work is reliably strong, the client relationships tend to last, and the team, by most accounts, genuinely enjoys what they do.