There has been a lot of chatter about the digital billboards going up on Highway 17, and we have the scoop.
Grey Vick, owner of Grey Outdoor LLC, is the promotional mastermind behind many stationary billboards across North Carolina and South Carolina as well as the new digital billboards here in the Topsail area. “Grey Outdoor LLC has about 185 structures with roughly 410 faces throughout the Carolinas, mostly concentrated on I-95,” Vick says. Currently six of those are digital with roughly eight second ads with seven to eight rotations. “Digital billboards are trouble-free because you can easily change them out,” Vick says.
Vick was born in Wilmington but grew up in Goldsboro, North Carolina. He always knew he would come back to Wilmington and made it come to fruition when he started college at UNCW. Armed with an accounting degree and a masters in accounting, in 2007 he partnered in Waterway Outdoor Company owning and managing billboards. In 2014 he decided to go out on his own by starting Grey Outdoor LLC.
“I pretty much started over, which was really hard to do because I had put all my energy into Waterway Outdoor Company and I felt I had come so far, but now I am glad I did it,” Vick says. He hopes to keep growing the business by finding other innovative ways to promote his clients. “With technology always changing I want to be able to provide the best for the most value.”
Vick and his wife, Sarah, are new parents to a son named Mason, and they enjoy surfing, boating and watching their son explore. “The coolest thing about what I do is that everyone wins — the advertisers benefit, landowners profit, local jurisdictions get taxes and I take home a paycheck; it’s a win, win,” Vick says. “We just want to be able to raise our son to grow up to be humble and a fine person — instilling good quality values in him.”
