Mike Gray is celebrating 30 years in outdoor advertising. The Go Media co-owner talks through the past three decades and why he believes in the power of giving back.
Mike Gray’s vision is to build the largest, New Zealand-owned outdoor advertising company.
“It’s never been done before,” he says. “It’s always been foreign-owned companies that have controlled our industry.”
He’s walking the talk. In May 2023, Go Media drew a big line in the sand, making the naming rights deal with Mt Smart Stadium in Tāmaki Makaurau.
“I had a bit of trouble convincing our board and it was pretty audacious,” says Gray. “Banks, financial institutions and insurance companies, that’s who take naming rights deals.”
Not an outdoor advertising SME, he laughs.
“I wanted to change the perception that we were small, so we negotiated the deal. It has been the most incredible thing for our brand.”
Gray has been sponsoring sports, arts, music, culture for as long as he as been in advertising. But the stadium deal and subsequently signing on as a principal partner of Auckland FC’s debut season has helped the public see that too.
“You get the power of association, you can be part of magical moments of a team when they lift the trophy, hospitality, hosting rights. It’s all these intangible benefits, but ultimately you are part of the community and you can help contribute and you can help elevate,” says Gray.
A story 30 years in the making
It’s been three decades since Gray first set foot in the advertising world – he has one of the longest running tenures in Aotearoa.
“Other than Duncan [Harris] from Ad-vantage, no one’s been going longer than us.”
But Gray didn’t start out in advertising. He used to be a standup comedian, with the stage name Late Night Mike in the early 1990s.
“While I was touring, I noticed billboards were starting to appear in Auckland,” says Gray. “I’d see a wall and think, ‘Oh, you could put one there.’
“A month later, a billboard would suddenly appear and I realised I had an eye for it.”
It was 1993, and Gray had just spotted “an amazing billboard site” on Auckland’s Fanshawe Street. He called the landlord, but wasn’t taken seriously. Gray retorted that he’d pay $50,000 a year. The landlord asked him to put it in writing and send a lease.
“I realised in that moment that I’d overturned him,” says Gray.
While he never acted on that opportunity, it got the wheels in his mind turning – especially when, six months later, someone else put a billboard on that site.
“I learned that if you don’t take action when you have an idea, someone else will.”
A company telling brand stories
That was the beginning. And more than 20 years later, his vision became Go Media, a locally owned outdoor advertising company that aims to help brands tell their stories.
Gray continued touring and noticed there were fewer billboards the further south he went. Originally from Ōtautahi Christchurch, he started there.
He thought it would be straightforward: he’d written a business plan and received a $5,000 government grant.
It didn’t quite go that way. Gray met with Christchurch City Council planner Barbara August, who told him: “Don’t waste your money, son. You’ll never get a billboard approved in this city.”
Gray was undeterred. Eventually, August relented, telling him if he could find an industrial zone that couldn’t be seen from the road, she’d consider it.
Not long later, he found his spot: a massive wall everyone saw as they left a movie theatre.
August laughed when he returned. But she approved his application. So Gray built three billboards and sold them all.
As Gray picked up sites, he encountered more and more hoops to jump through. “I was constantly battling councils. It wasn’t for the faint-hearted.”
For 10 years, he focused on building his business, then called Phantom Outdoor in Christchurch and a few sites around the South Island with his wife, Andrea Rongonui.
Phantom friends
Theirs was a sister business to Jim Wilson’s Phantom Billstickers – the latter had put up posters for Gray in his comedian days. Gray even worked as a billsticker for a while.
“Between Jim and I, we literally changed the face of outdoor advertising in New Zealand. We made the most instrumental changes.”
But they parted ways: “Jim’s priority was his postering business and I really wanted to focus on large format. So we rebranded as Waho, which is the Māori word for outdoors,”
In 2000, Gray won EY Young Entrepreneur of the Year for Phantom Outdoor. Three years later, Waho was named Canterbury Small Business of the Year.
The next afternoon, Gray and Rongonui sold Waho. It was 10 years to the day since they started.
New ventures
But Gray didn’t step away for long. He set up a new media buying company, Aidemedia, which was ticking along. After the global financial crisis hit in 2008, he started developing billboard sites again.
Then came the 2010 and 2011 Christchurch earthquakes – destroying Gray’s family home and nearly all of his billboard sites in the CBD.
“I didn’t know for six months whether I had a business left or not. You couldn’t get in [to the CBD]. I tried one day, only to be escorted out by the army. So I would see on the TV news a building had come down and go, ‘Oh, that site’s gone.’”
Gray and Rongonui relocated to Waiheke Island “temporarily” – they’ve never left.
Fast forward a couple of years to a 45-minute coffee meeting. A merger deal was struck between Gray, Christchurch company Big Picture (since bought out) and Bacbou Billboards, run by current business partner Dean Shaw in the lower North Island.
On September 1, 2014, Go Media was unveiled in the merger announcement. They built a successful static billboard company, then the tide turned: “Suddenly people want digital. So off you have to go again.”
All the while, Go Media was getting bigger. In 2018, they won the Metlink Greater Wellington contract – the first time it was awarded to a Kiwi company. Winning – then retaining – the five-year contract was a feather in the cap.
“It was huge for us to win it. It proved we don’t have to give our major contracts to the foreign-owned corporates.”
Almost business as usual
When Covid hit, Gray says Go Media shouldn’t have survived, but good relationships with landlords let them negotiate generous terms to continue trading.
At that point, Go Media were the biggest in every market south of Kirikiriroa Hamilton, but still small in Tāmaki Makaurau as they had waited for the digital revolution. So when everywhere except Auckland came out of lockdown, it was almost business as usual – Go Media operate offices in Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch.
Still with an eye to growth, they were planning a mass digital expansion, with their sights set on Tāmaki. LED screens were going cheap due to Covid, so Go Media doubled down and purchased “several million dollars’ worth of screens at half price”.
The screens started arriving just as Auckland went to Covid alert level 3, so they got to work – building 88 digital billboards in 18 months. Go Media now has 37 digital screens in Auckland and the largest nationwide reach for their roadside digital billboard network.
Community support pays off
While digital expansion has been significant, Gray is always looking to acquire sites. And Go Media’s community involvement has helped that mission.
“We’ve picked up a lot of really good sites from competitors, especially post the lockdowns. We had landlords approach us. A lot of them were like, ‘We see you sponsor the Hurricanes, the Pulse. You seem to back the community. We want to come with you.’”
Gray sees giving back as an important part of Go Media’s wider brand storytelling work.
“Being digital, you always have some unsold space, so there’s capacity. I’d rather use that space to help the arts or help someone fundraise or help charities or sports – because what we do is we help storytell for brands.
“What we do gives meaning. We are more than just a media business and we are more than profit. If you could choose to be that or not, I’d choose to be that every day of the week.”
This story comes from NZ Marketing magazine issue 85, Dec 2025-Feb 2026. Why not subscribe? Get four issues a year for just $50 (including delivery) if you autorenew.
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