Advice tips on how to make the most of a company anniversary
This year, we are proud to be supporting clients who are celebrating a 200th anniversary for a manufacturer and a 50th anniversary for a building products company. Both of these are great opportunities to raise awareness and generate interest in a business. As we specialise in business to business (b2b) Public Relations, with expertise in construction and manufacturing, we have lots of experience of helping clients to maximise awareness during their anniversary years.
Here we bring you our top PR tips for making the most of a business’ anniversary:
- Start planning early
The key to getting the most out of an anniversary is planning and preparation. It’s a good idea to form a small committee from the company to start planning it at least six months prior to the date. They should assign tasks and responsibilities to individuals and small groups, deciding on the main events and activities to take place throughout the year and who will be responsible for organising them and with specific deadlines, just to keep everything on track. The committee should meet at least once a month to update on progress. Release the date of the main event/s to staff and customers/suppliers as a ‘save the date’ so they are aware several months in advance.
It’s important to remember that an anniversary isn’t just an opportunity for one story - you should plan to mark the anniversary with several different activities throughout the year.
- Make the anniversary memorable with a logo
Work with an agency like Dragonfly PR to create an anniversary logo. This can be used on email signatures, letterhead, invitations and press releases etc for the anniversary year. It’s a great way to raise awareness about the anniversary and reinforce your branding.
- Build up a historic display
If it’s a major anniversary, such as 50 or 100 years or more, dig back into the archives and enlist the help of some of the company’s longest serving employees to source photographs from over the years. It’s always worthwhile to find old factory photographs, images of company away-days, management team pics, old brochures and the like. These can be mounted into a display, for use in the company’s reception area and at the event. Make this display available to staff, visitors, customers and suppliers throughout the anniversary period. Some of these images could also be used on the company’s Linkedin page, to generate interest.
- Create a celebratory brochure or history book
Some of our clients have had great success with commissioning their own anniversary/history book. This can be written by a specialist author and publisher and is a great keepsake for employees, retired staff, customers and the local community.
Gather historic photos of people, plant and equipment from over the years, allow for interviews with current and past staff to gather anecdotes and bring the book right up to date with interviews with the current directors. There are specific companies who specialise in authoring business history books, which we can recommend, if this is an avenue you would like to pursue.
- Have a focus for the anniversary – ideally a celebration event
It’s a great idea to hold a customer and press event for your company’s anniversary. Remember it doesn’t need to take place on the exact day or even the month in which your company was founded. Choose a convenient date, ideally in the Summer, when the weather should be better and people are more likely to attend. If you have the space at your company’s premises then it’s a great idea to have a marquee on the car park or to even set it up within a warehouse or empty factory space. Alternatively, host the event at a local hotel.
Theme the event in line with the year you are celebrating, if possible. For example, use gold decorations for 50 years, diamond for 60 years etc…
As well as current staff and customers, you could invite retired employees of the company and local and trade media to attend. From a news point of view, it makes sense to link the anniversary with a positive announcement by the company, for example, new jobs created, growth of the business, a major new contract won, major investment made etc.. Including a news hook gives the story a much better chance of in-depth coverage.
This could be a good time to celebrate the contribution of employees who are the lifeblood of any successful business. Therefore, why not introduce long service awards, if you don’t have them already. You could celebrate the longest servers by awarding them with small gifts of gold or silver pens, tie pins or cash incentives at the anniversary event.
It would also be a good idea to host a Linkedin Live interview on the morning of the event, which means you could capture and share the excitement and celebratory atmosphere of the anniversary with a wider business audience.
- Organise a pre-event photoshoot
The day of an event is not the best time to organise a photoshoot, so we usually recommend this is set up beforehand.
Invite a select number of local and regional press photographers to a photoshoot at the company premises to celebrate the milestone. Include key people within the shot – an aerial shot with staff formed in a big number can work well if there are enough people and enough external space. We always recommend commissioning your own photographer as many regional media and magazines do not have their own photographers these days.
It is also a good idea to invite a quality regional, national and trade magazine, such as Insider to carry out one-to-one interview with the Managing Director. As editors are busy people, with many managing several magazines at once, they are likely to prefer this to attending an all-day event.
Our team would then write a press release about the anniversary, which focuses on major highlights, milestones and achievements over the years, with statistics on how the business has grown, increased staff levels and investment made. This would be issued with the photograph the day before embargoed for the anniversary date.
- Link with a charity or local community event
Ask employees to nominate a charity or community organisation from a shortlist, to support in its anniversary year. Each member of staff could be given a day to get involved in voluntary or community work for that charity. As well as being good for local morale, motivation and community relationships, this could potentially generate a local or trade press release.
- Commission an anniversary video
Commissioning a video is a great way to capture the essence of a business in its anniversary year. The video should, briefly, tell the story of the company’s history but also would capture the highlights of an anniversary event, whilst celebrating the successes of its employees. A professional video editing company could also include video footage from the past and also vox-pop style interviews of memories from over the years, right up to the present day with a video message from the Managing Director.
Crucial to making sure your business benefits from any anniversary celebrations is securing coverage in the trade, regional and potentially, the national media. Whether it’s the construction or manufacturing trade press, regional or national media, Dragonfly’s PR team can help you to maximise interest and awareness throughout your anniversary year.
Dragonfly PR is a Sheffield-headquartered PR agency to business to business companies.
For more information or help with organising Public Relations for your anniversary event, to raise awareness or generate sales leads, talk to our PR team on 0114 349 5341 or email hello@dragonflypr.co.uk.