Citywide 5G Network Launch

A national telecoms operator approached us ahead of its 5G rollout in Lagos with a demanding brief: establish network leadership in the market before competitors reached the same announcement, and do it in a way that reached both the premium early-adopter audience and the mass market simultaneously.

The challenge was that those two audiences occupy different parts of the city and travel different routes. A single-corridor campaign would have reached one and missed the other.

We built a 24-site plan across two tiers. Tier one placed digital screens in Victoria Island, Ikoyi and Lekki Phase 1 — the districts where early adopters live and work, and where full-motion creative could demonstrate network speed rather than merely claim it. Digital also let the client update messaging as the rollout expanded district by district, which a static campaign could not have done.

Tier two placed unipoles and gantries on the high-volume arterials — the Third Mainland Bridge, Ikorodu Road, the Lekki-Epe Expressway and the Ikeja corridor — carrying a simplified version of the same creative for reach at scale.

The two tiers ran in sequence rather than in parallel. Digital launched two weeks ahead to build anticipation among the audience most likely to adopt first, followed by the full arterial rollout timed to coincide with commercial availability. Creative on the digital sites was refreshed four times over the campaign as coverage extended into new areas.

XL Billboards handled LASAA permitting across all 24 sites, APCON vetting for every creative iteration, printing and mounting, and fortnightly condition inspections for the full six months.