Graham Bloxham has taken over mainstream media in NZ through a massive shift from opinion-based writing to social media.

Kiwi social media expert Graham “Bloxi” Bloxham talks about how he became deeply passionate about Wellington, digital footprints, and social communications.

When did your passion for all this digital stuff begin?

BLOXHAM holding a Samsung phone that built Wellington LIVE and the phone he took to the protest.

When I was a teenager in the ’90s, every day after school I would read The Dominion Post. I was fascinated by global and local stories. Then I would tell stories about these events to my group, family, and friends. I became a signwriter at 13, working in the hallway of our home in Totara Park — painting and designing logos for local hairdressers and music stores. At 18, I started my first advertising billboard service by placing ads at the Upper Hutt railway station. I charged local businesses for signs, art, and billboards — and would shout my mates “kegs of beer” if their parents owned businesses, to get stories. I’d then sell billboards and make signs for their parents or family friends.

Upper Hutt and Wellington is a small place, to be fair. Since then, I’ve always either owned billboard companies or digital media networks. With a couple of mates, we built a large network of touchscreen kiosks called I-Stations, and I also wrote an early Yellow Pages app called 14info.co.nz.

What was the first big advertiser you hooked?

BLOXHAM interviewing Nicola WILLIS when she was in opposition to the ARDERN government.

My first big advertiser was Wellington Alive, the campaign for Kerry PRENDERGAST, Mark BLUMSKY, Chris PARKIN, and Rex NICHOLS, run by Brent SLATER for Wellington Council. I borrowed TVNZ studios out at Avalon to hand-paint massive skins, and I managed the design, printing, and installs for the campaign. The Wellington Alive team—we—won the election with nine candidates and BLUMSKY as Mayor. That was my intro to the big city lights. With no one to guide me and literally no cash, two of us managed to sign-write huge Wellington Alive signs for all nine candidates. I remember the sweetest moment: standing in the Mayor’s office at Town Hall, surrounded by winners—and a few who lost.

Now, when you say social media is brutal, how do you deal with the personal online attacks? Thank God for AI. We can now see it all in real time—who it is, if they’re at work, how serious they are—and since I can assess the threat level, I can reply with my head, not my heart. Before this, I didn’t know how serious it was or where it was coming from. That’s a powerful (and free) place to be—powerful to be able to respond or ignore.

How did you get into Social Media?

I’ve always been in the media game—online directories, outdoor media ownership—and around 2023, I purchased Wellington Live from a crazy, mad teenager. I was building a bundling engine called “Wellington in Your Pocket” with Jason BUCKLEY, the HELL marketing guy. He asked for an advertising budget to promote the project, and I hate paying for ads. I offered him $50K worth of billboards and purchased Wellington Live from him to avoid paying Facebook for ads. That gave him the reach he needed. It was a little unorthodox, and the purchase wasn’t for what it’s since evolved into—a social media powerhouse that can grab 40% of the city’s attention with one post.

We did get in a bit of trouble—I’ll admit that. I forced them to purchase the pages off BUCKLEY, as we were too similar—two full-on marketers—and he wanted us, as owners, to hide behind young people, which I knew was impossible in Wellington. BUCKLEY then spent crazy energy trying to hurt us. Nuts.

I then went to the Wellington protest and hit Facebook Live, unknowingly and as a complete “boomer,” not realizing it would be broadcast to millions immediately. That changed Wellington Live—from posts of ducks crossing roads, earthquakes, fires, and beautiful videos of Lilia Alexander (the previous owner) breathlessly running through flowers—to a more serious site.

That sudden shift drove Alexander mad—lots of “what are you doing” texts and messages—and she subsequently spent two years trying to kill what she started, ending in an insincere apology. Alexander, BUCKLEY, and others, primed and supported by MSM and others—it was a fairly brutal, nasty time. Those personal attacks and two major threats continue to this day, even though I’m now just a content creator and sprint editor.

Lilia Alexander, who built Wellington LIVE.

Now, I don’t condone relentless, brutal personal attacks. These days, we have over 50 million engagements a month, and ONE NETWORK WELLINGTON LIVE has 5 brands, 33 pages and groups, pushing over 80 pieces of content daily to 7 platforms. We’re very fortunate in Wellington to have super-fast internet, a cool city, and the ability to outsource all this work. 

But back at the start in 2022/23, I employed Kiwi creators and writers. However, the offshore teams produce “at least 15x the output,” work 24/7, take it seriously as a career, and understand the tools and platform sophistication. They live in huge cities with 19 million people. These people are driven, busy, and hungry to succeed. It’s absolutely amazing how the 24/7 teams have manifested success. 

You just can’t compare the performance of a Kiwi with that of an offshore content creator. It’s like chalk and cheese. 

From there, I got into all the platforms — Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, Messenger, WhatsApp, TikTok — and I was even forced into Instagram, although I find it upside down and a backward version of Facebook. I still lead the content creators with the biggest TikTok: 5.5 million — just saying. However, Sara Jane Seddon from the mighty suburb of Island Bay has just reached 5 million on TikTok. 

We set out to learn how the algorithms and platform tools work. For me, the content was about telling natural, fun, and entertaining stories, and general stuff about the environment in a way that was a bit different. I quickly found out what a community backlash felt like and realised “every single comment is worthy.” All news — bad, urgent, happy, eager, funny, or angry — is OK. It all goes into a melting pot called life in Wellington. 

The audience and community growth were more about how much money you had to pour into building organic audiences. I built that through 2023/24 when advertising was dead. So, we built a super-engaged audience that is now in hot demand. I’ve always been on the lease side of billboards and never felt comfortable on the sales side of advertising. I’m not a big fan of online ads either, so making content and building audiences was a lot more fun than selling ads. 

From a very early time in digital, I learnt the discipline of being real, natural, and “sharing now,” but I never once thought that it would turn into NZ’s biggest social media network — much bigger than even Stuff. That happened through a mass audience shift from old media to social media. And we are in social media — it’s as simple as that. We did lots of trial-and-error content, but people are on devices, and brands are constantly being pushed to them.

It’s like having a giant, dynamic, powerful mechanism pushing out stuff to millions of people in a way they want — and seem to ask for — every day, all day, for a very low cost.

What do you like most about social media?Bloxham at HOMEGROWN backstage interviewing the stars

I love that it’s the cheapest form of media and monetization that you can get into. And that 44% of the tens of thousands of comments, videos, pictures, events, and stories are sent to us for free. We don’t print a newspaper or have all those costs—it’s a nice place, full of “mostly uplifting” entertainment. If an emergency or big story happens, we get it within seconds, and our 24/7 sprint editors amplify it. If you own a phone, buy an audience, and have the confidence and energy, you can do it.

How have you seen Social media evolve?Bloxham was attacked and filmed the violent end of the WLG protest, doubling the size of the network in a single day.

This is the story of why old media will be almost eliminated—like how the Yellow Pages died. It’s their slow-motion train wreck.

AI and Elon Musk… [TRUMPISM] forced Meta to open up recently, and I personally think Google and Meta take way too much advertising revenue out of NZ. That opening up of organic audiences has tripled ONE NETWORK WELLINGTON LIVE’s organic reach and engagement rates. People “hate, hate, hate” ads. Natural, organic, relevant, and timely content is what people want. We’ve developed “social personalisation” with AI. We’ve even started to predict what people want.

It has become incredibly powerful. Just last week, the ONE HUB team scoped 1,700 people who looked at Wellington from offshore overnight, and using AI, we predicted when they would travel to Wellington.

That is seen by some as scary—and is absolute gold for companies like AA, Qantas, or local hotels. Given the annual McKinsey report says, “If you can’t measure it, never spend that money,” this kills magazines and print overnight. Gone burger. It’s all driven by an insatiable desire for what’s happening—I want it now, I want it short, snacky, and I’m online 24/7.

I’ve seen social media, data, and audience growth accelerate since the protest. And with AI, content creation, targeting, and personalisation have become really affordable. Since COVID, corporate brands have gotten involved, wanting exposure in natural, organic audiences. Now there’s interest from many big brands—like Mazda, Air NZ, and New World.

Wellington LIVE even partnered with Singapore Airlines a few years ago and the world’s biggest BBQ company, Weber, to open stores. Everywhere you look, there are tools to monetise the audiences. And with paid ads converting at 0.004%, we guarantee 26x that performance, at least.

For me personally, the Wellington LIVE thing evolved from a hobby. It started with just me and my mates talking about national and global events. I’d buy them beers for helping with content ideas. Now, the sites have evolved so much.

How did you get into billboards?Bloxham holding a stick as taken my STUFF to make him look silly; that’s how mainstream behaves, disgraceful individuals

I built my first mega site on St. Patrick’s Fence on Cobham Drive heading in from the airport, which was a 6m x 3m site. I booked a meeting with media buyer John Dee and went to Saatchi & Saatchi on the 3rd floor, corner of Courtenay Place and Taranaki Street. Sean McCready, John’s boss at the time, kicked me for touch and told me to come back when I had 50 billboards, as “one” site was not enough! That stung!

The following year, I turned up with 59 billboards and was told NO, as the bigger companies, OGGI, APN, and so on, had bigger networks in Auckland and I was still too small. This “wankiness” started my wariness of media buyers and advertising in general. I knew all the rich landowners in Wellington and Auckland to sign up the billboards and build the wealth, and I relied on salespeople to suck up and sell to the shiny agencies and media buyers. In those days, agencies were creative-led, like organic social media now is.

I quickly figured out how to bend council rules and get huge billboard consents, and I totally disrupted outdoor media in Wellington. I was soon generating $1.5m in revenue annually, making $400k in profit, and I sold that media company to APN, who are now NZME.

I have always understood property owners, and those leases are like gold. We generally keep 10 or so sites for charity and personal promotion, or for companies we need to promote, like Wellington LIVE, etc. I recently helped the digital outdoor LUMO guys sign up 5 or 6 digital sites in Wellington, with my various landlord contacts, and to be frank, I still love billboards. It feels weird having developed and merged massive social media networks, and having outdoor billboard sites, since they are so completely different. But billboards are now very interactive, so they are doing okay, and billboards and social media work incredibly well together.

Billboards and audiences have unlimited possibilities to work with social media to entertain and convert audiences. I see a huge revenue stream in a symbiotic channel between the two, and we did quite a bit of measured work in that area. With #reporting, we can see immediate audience engagement, within minutes, so there is no reason a billboard can’t link to a social media audience that then purchases something nearby. I see that happening within the new ONE NETWORK Wellington Live initiative, and the same goes with Radio and TVNZ. It is just the beginning of interactivity. And the media that do this will remain viable options.”

What gets you going on a daily basis?

Every day is a new day. I’m enjoying not being on that phone all the time. Wellington is a good city, and it was like being in a video game. It’s good to take a photo as I like the spot, as opposed to trying to always angle the content to surprise and delight. I’m running for city hall currently, and I’m still networking like crazy. This social media thing has thrown the “cat amongst the pigeons” at times, but I’m keeping busy with the ONE HUB EXIT, and being really genuine in how I interact with others in the race. It’s for Welly at the end of the day.

More recently, I’ve been head down working with the ONE NETWORK WELLINGTON LIVE team to merge our sites and audiences together whilst sharing all our various skills, and bringing our 24/7 team into much more robust systems for the EXIT. Every day I’m learning to be careful with AI and being challenged to focus, something I struggle with. I’m still actively involved as a content creator, writing with AI as a buddy, driving, taking photos, and sending videos to the 24/7 sprint editors to snack up into content and send out. We send to 7 platforms, so the messaging, posts, reels, polls, stories, and the various “tool sets” the platforms offer us, often need to be split into different feels, styles, and so on. One recent innovation is that organic audiences often react to vibe and energy, so we use 3 modes: maintenance, fast, and “the mode I love,” insane mode. With insane mode, we can amplify to 40% of the city. It’s absolutely positively ridiculous to be fair, but it’s still a lot of fun seeing it operate without me doing everything. The topic editors have their own audiences, etc. It is a bit complex, but with a good system, “ONE HUB” style approach, it’s working out fine.

As I’m exiting SM, I’m starting to see SM for what it is: A place where the 0.004% Karens and haters have a much bigger impact than is thought. In their own minds, but not in reality. Though 99%+ of content and people in the groups, pages, sites, and community are normal, fun, and uplifting, the bullies and haters “must have to burn out,” as they are coming at it from a bad or negative place, and that energy can’t be sustained, unless you’re a maniac or “mainstream media” and have a financial reason to try and hold you back. But we approach that differently.

When I arrived home today, I got a phone call from a person in the eastern ward, which is code for Hataitai to Seatoun, saying: ‘We’ve got a problem. If you’re going to be a councillor… what are you going to do to get our vote?’ So that local body thing is really my main focus now. Bring on October.

That is my biggest dream come true. If I can “get into council” to represent the people, and try to weed out all the waste, stupid projects, get cycle lanes off the agenda, and focus on growth and weeding out some nasty stuff holding Wellington back. Where I grew up, the council wasn’t as visible as they are now. They were servants of the public and got on and did the work. That’s how I prefer it.

What does your schedule look like today?

It’s broken up into three parts. Family. I love competing to prove that I’m still one of the best on the global stage, and I can do that, run for city hall, and be there for my family. There’s the relaxing side, which is about tuning out and just being me, and enjoying the vibrant people and environment of Wellington. The third part is the now. That’s being in the present, where I really get to express and push myself. I love fear. It’s the balance between what I’ve learned, the fear of failing, and being polite. With something new, I can really push myself to that edge.

I think being in the now is the most exciting part, especially for people who want a better Wellington.

If I had two wishes, it would be to reassure all the SM haters: it’s okay to let it go. The fight is over, and “no one won or lost,” and we all still live in Wellington.

Two, the temperature increased by 5/7 degrees, and we start growing bananas and coffee.

What do you actually think of WCC?

Maybe you’ve put yourself in a position where you’ve built massive engagement or developed AI to un-redact council-censored documents, so the identities of your bullies become visible. People can change. I am far from the perfect communicator – I’m always pushing the envelope, disrupting, and hoping to reduce costs at the council to save ratepayers’ lives, homes, and make Wellington great again. But it’s possible to collaborate and move forward. If you have the vision, you’re open to ideas, and you use your ears and mouth in proportion, you’re already halfway there. The rest is just dedicated work, determination, and surrounding yourself with supportive, capable, and honest people who believe in transparency. With AI, everything is open now.

What’s exciting to you

Family. Being accessible for my girls. My next phase will be getting fit and healthy for their lives, which are so vibrant and dynamic, in a new set of circumstances that require exciting thought. It’s wild times, and I’m committed to them a lot.

It’s exciting that big brands are starting to see that organic social media audiences deliver better, more natural reach than toxic paid ads that deliver only 0.04%. Radio ONE NETWORK WellingonLIVE feels like the start of MOREfm 15 years ago. We just started Streams and Social radio, so it’s always evolving.

When I was at school, it was all about ‘if you want to be a successful person, you have to be an All Black.’ For me, I wanted money and wasn’t that fast. Aggressive, yes, but I liked skiing too much. I had a skateboard, a BMX, and pen and paper.

What motivates you?

Mainstream media are why this thing is so valuable. They are opinionated, discourageable, self-important zealots. Absolutely disgraceful people, always looking to benefit at another’s expense, primarily.

To never forget where you’re from, that there is no glass ceiling, and to never stop entertaining. Chasing that feeling of fear and a great story intertwined into a relationship. Because we didn’t really have much when I was growing up, I found it really easy to just pick up the phone and have a chat with a mate and compete if you need to. I still use the same mentality now, and I’ve been able to build a pretty awesome life and career out of that approach.

See unredacted public docs, my story, The PROTEST YouTube channel for more of Bloxham’s stuff.

Story from various sources, inspired by “Mad Mike the drifting driver,” written for the NONSTOP Wellington.Live website. By AQ, writer, content creator, and 24/7 sprint editor LEAD.