Writing on the wall for Croydon graffiti artists (From Croydon Guardian)

Croydon graffiti artists making their mark through the internet

11:30am Thursday 24th November 2011 in News By Nick Hitchens

A team of entrepreneurs are part of a growing online community driving South Croydon’s economy by turning the underground artform of graffiti into a thriving business venture.

Graffiti Life was set up by artists Adam Brazier and David Speed alongside businessmen Iona Thamas and Paul Hamilton a year ago offering workshops, the chance to hire out artist for a day, or commissioning huge scale projects.

Mr Speed, 29, who grew up in South Croydon, said: “People used to think of graffiti as this existing in this shadowy world, and even if they had wanted to get in touch with artist they wouldn’t know how. With the internet we are just a Google search away.”

“We now do almost all of our marketing online because it's so useful to get a top spot on a Google search.”

Their success has seen them commissioned by Greenpeace to produce artwork at Glastonbury festival as well as working with Mercedes, Topshop and Addidas.

Mr Speed said: “I have noticed a lot of new leads since using the service, and about 80% of our customers come from online advertising. It’s been a great factor in our success.”

South Croydon town has been crowned one of the UK’s eTowns by Google after registering a 23.2 per cent growth in commercial internet activity in the past year, the 18th highest in the UK.

To compile this list, Google shortlisted the 700 towns with the highest online economic activity, and then ranked them in terms of the percentage increase in local small and medium sized enterprises using AdWords over the last year.

Dan Cobley, MD of Google UK, said: “The Internet is contributing massively towards the overall UK economy, and we want to encourage and help more small businesses to get online and succeed online."