Take a look at the following facts: • There are more than 200m users registered on MySpace. • Google sees 31bn searches every month – in 2006 the yearly total was only 2.7bn. • In December 1992 the first commercial text message was sent. Today the number of text messages sent and received, exceeds the total population of the planet. • The number of internet devices in 1984 was 1,000. Today there are more than 1bn. T he digital revolution that has changed our lives so drastically is having an enormous effect on the way busi- nesses talk to their customers. And the rise of boutique creative firms that understand this new world better than many of their older competitors offers clients a range of choices. Not so long ago, if a company decided to change its image, the options were few. Typically they would have involved going to a marketing or advertising agency that would probably try to sell it a campaign involving 30 or 60-second commercials, or posters. Not any longer, says Michael Liburd, CEO of ebb&flow, a creative company that specialises in branding, design and lifestyle communication. Liburd believes that a set of circumstances fuelled by digital technology is conspiring to make brand building a different proposition that requires a revised mindset. He says that for some companies the old ways work just fine, but for others there are now far more impactful ideas for engaging with a customer or client. “Consumers no longer make product choices, they make choices that compliment their lifestyle,” Liburd says. “This has created a new dynamic, where the relationship between brands and audiences has become fluid and intertwined. “Look at where branding has gone,” he adds, by way of illustration. “We had mass communication; it was all about TV, billboards, things that are highly visible outdoors. They talk to a lot of people at a time; but they are not targeted and focused and for some companies that is not good enough. “Now we have witnessed a move from mass communication to personalisation. You have a website that says ‘hello’, it knows who you are and can search its database and communicate with you with the sort of advertising that you are specifically interested in.” In the minds of many, this in itself would be cutting-edge, but Liburd says ebb&flow has already identified the next phase in brand building: it is called lifestyle communication. “It’s about moving from monologue to dialogue. We think about the lifestyle of the consumer and we find the essence of the lifestyle experience within that target audience,” says Liburd. To illustrate, he cites some examples. “Take a person from a privileged background who has lost their wealth. They’d still have the ethics of a privileged background, albeit in a lesser environment. So you would still talk to the same individual with the same cues. “Take a car company, for example. Certain people, no matter how well they have done in life, will say a Rolls Royce doesn’t fit with who they are. We all make lifestyle decisions that are about how we are brought up and how we want to be perceived. “Angelina Jolie could turn up to a film premiere on a push bike or in a Morris Minor and we’d go ‘wow’. Victoria Beckham’s brand is different so she couldn’t do that, but her husband could turn up in a battered old jeep and we’d be impressed. His brand allows that.” Ebb&flow, says Liburd, understands what a consumer is trying to do and bases any subsequent campaign around that understanding, rather than focusing on an indiscriminate, one-size-fits-all solution. Creative company ebb&flow is carving out a niche as a new-media brand-building boutique. Yinka Michael meets two of its main men 106 POWERLIST 2010 Interview The digital revolution will not be televised