Ten years in business is no small feat, and GRAZA Media Limited had every reason to pause and celebrate. At the Chelsea Hotel, Abuja, clients, staff, suppliers, and industry heavyweights gathered for an evening of warmth, reflection and celebration as the out-of-home advertising firm marked a decade of growth while unveiling an ambitious vision for the next chapter, ROLAND OGBONNAYA writes.
There was something fitting about the setting. At the Chelsea Hotel, Abuja, where conversations flowed as freely as the evening’s hospitality, GRAZA Media Limited gathered the people who had been part of its story — clients, staff, suppliers, partners and some of the biggest names in Nigeria’s advertising and business circles.
It was an evening of laughter, reminiscence and celebration. But beneath the music, the photographs and the warm exchanges lay a more profound message: GRAZA had come of age.
Ten years after setting out in the competitive world of out-of-home (OOH) advertising, the Abuja-based company was not merely celebrating how far it had travelled. It was announcing where it intended to go next.
Under the theme, “GRAZA at 10 — The Next Decade Starts With Us,” the anniversary soirée became both a celebration of the past and a declaration of intent for the future.
For a company whose business has long been about putting brands where people can see them, the occasion offered an opportunity to look beyond the billboard — to the people, relationships, ideas and possibilities that have sustained the business over the past decade.
And there was plenty to celebrate. From its beginnings as an outdoor advertising company, GRAZA has steadily built a presence in Abuja, developing a portfolio of outdoor media assets and relationships with brands seeking visibility in Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory.
But the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Zacchaeus Akinadewo, believes the next chapter must be about something considerably bigger.
For him, the billboard is only the beginning. “A billboard is a product. A location is an asset. An audience is an opportunity. Attention is value. Intelligence creates advantage,” he said.
It was a line that perhaps captured the mood of the evening better than any elaborate anniversary speech could.
Because while the gathering celebrated ten years of achievement, it was also about what happens when the celebration is over and the work of the next decade begins.
“Ten years ago, the opportunity was to build a credible outdoor advertising company. We have done that,” Akinadewo said. “The question before us now is much bigger: what should GRAZA become over the next ten years?”
His answer is a business that combines physical visibility with intelligence — one capable of helping brands understand where audiences are, how they move, what they notice and, ultimately, how media environments can contribute to business outcomes.
For an industry that has traditionally been associated with large roadside structures and commanding visual displays, the world around outdoor advertising is changing.
Advertisers increasingly want to know not simply where their messages are displayed, but who is seeing them, how audiences behave and what value the exposure creates.
GRAZA wants to position itself squarely within that changing landscape. “We do not want to be defined simply by the number of structures we own or operate,” Akinadewo said. “We want to be defined by the value we create around those structures. Our ambition is to make visibility more intelligent, more measurable and more useful to the brands we serve.”
It is an ambitious proposition.
The company’s ten-year strategy therefore envisages a deliberate movement from space to influence, presence to intelligence, visibility to evidence, inventory to audience and execution to insight.
That means strengthening capabilities in data and measurement, digital and dynamic OOH formats, audience intelligence, campaign reporting, technology and client experience.
It also means changing the conversation with clients. “The market has changed,” Akinadewo said. “Advertisers are asking better questions. They want more than a location. They want to understand audiences, demonstrate value and make smarter decisions. GRAZA must be capable of answering those questions.”
Yet, for all the talk of technology, data and audience intelligence, the anniversary celebration at the Chelsea Hotel offered a reminder of something more fundamental. Businesses are ultimately built by people.
The clients who trusted the company with their brands. The suppliers who helped deliver its promises. The employees who kept the wheels turning. The partners who opened doors. The industry colleagues who watched, competed, collaborated and contributed to the evolution of the sector.
They were all part of the room. And that human dimension remains central to Akinadewo’s vision of the next GRAZA.
“The employee is also the brand,” he said. “A logo does not answer the phone. A billboard does not manage a relationship. People do.”
It is why the company’s transformation agenda places considerable emphasis on organisational culture — ownership, responsiveness, client empathy, accountability, collaboration and continuous improvement.
The message is simple enough: technology may transform the business, but people will determine how the transformation is experienced.
There is another ambition behind GRAZA’s next chapter.
The company wants to become more than an operator of outdoor media assets. It wants to become part of the intellectual conversation shaping the future of OOH advertising in Abuja and Nigeria.
That means developing proprietary insights, publishing perspectives on outdoor advertising and audience behaviour, and contributing meaningfully to conversations around the future of media.
“We want GRAZA to have something meaningful to say about this industry,” Akinadewo said.
“We want our clients, colleagues and competitors to associate our name not only with outdoor media, but with ideas, evidence and a deeper understanding of audiences.”
It is a significant shift in ambition.
The company wants to establish itself among the top five Brand Visibility & Audience Intelligence firms in Abuja, supported by stronger infrastructure, technology, people, client relationships and measurable performance.
But Akinadewo is under no illusion that such an ambition can be achieved through words alone. “This is not a slogan for us,” he stressed. “If we claim that position, we must earn it. Clients must experience the difference. Our people must demonstrate the difference. Our data must demonstrate the difference. Our reporting must demonstrate the difference.”
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the anniversary was that GRAZA was already looking beyond its tenth year.
The company is thinking about 2036, the year it hopes to mark two decades in business. That may seem a long way off. But businesses that survive and thrive rarely wait for tomorrow before thinking about it.
“We are deliberately asking ourselves what we want the headline to be when GRAZA turns 20,” Akinadewo said. “We want to build a business today that makes that future headline believable.”
It is an acknowledgement that longevity brings its own demands. The practices that worked in GRAZA’s first decade may not necessarily carry the company through its second.
“The next decade will require courage,” he said. “Some things that worked in our first decade may not work in the next. We are prepared to stop what no longer serves us, start what the future requires and protect the things that made GRAZA worth building.”
And Then There Was the Celebration
For one evening, however, strategy could wait. At the Chelsea Hotel, the business of planning for 2036 gave way to the pleasure of simply appreciating 2016 to 2026, a decade of work, relationships, setbacks, milestones and growth.
Guests mingled. Old acquaintances caught up. New conversations began. Staff and partners shared in the sense of occasion.
There was the unmistakable warmth that comes when an organisation pauses long enough to recognise the people who helped make its journey possible.
And perhaps that was the true significance of the evening. GRAZA’s tenth anniversary was never really about billboards. It was about the people who saw possibilities where others saw advertising space. It was about relationships built one campaign, one client and one promise at a time. It was about a company that began with an ambition and, ten years later, believes that ambition can be expanded into something considerably more sophisticated.
Akinadewo put it succinctly. “Ten years gives us history. It gives us relationships. It gives us experience. But history is only valuable if it helps you build the future.”
And so, when the lights eventually dimmed at the Chelsea Hotel and the anniversary celebration drew to a close, GRAZA was left with more than memories of a memorable night.
It was left with a question: “What are we prepared to become to make the future GRAZA happen?”
For the company, the answer appears to be clear. The next decade starts with them.
