Good for you! You’ve decided to celebrate your company anniversary. No matter the milestone, a company anniversary is one of the most authentic opportunities you have to engage and pay tribute to your employees, clients, and customers, and to communicate your organization’s values in a meaningful way. At ECHO Storytelling, we’re experts in anniversary marketing. Since 1999, we’ve helped hundreds of world-class brands mark their big birthdays and we’ve learned all the best practices and pitfalls along the way. Here’s a summary of our 20 years of wisdom on this topic, and how we recommend you plan for your upcoming anniversary for maximum impact and minimum stress!
Planning For Your Anniversary: 2+ Years in Advance
If you are planning a company anniversary campaign at least two years out, congrats on being so on top of things! Now, you’re probably looking at a pretty major milestone, and celebrating a 25th anniversary, a 50th anniversary, a 100th anniversary (or something even more momentous) is an occasion to do something big.
“We engaged our people around the world in a whole new way with this book. No matter which office they work from, our employees now feel we are all part of ‘one MSA story’ and bonded by our shared values. Thank you for translating our 100 years of history into such a powerful tool.”
— Mark Deasy, Director, Global Public Relations and Corporate Communications, MSA
A beautiful and compelling commemorative book that captures and celebrates your company’s history, culture, and values is a great place to start. If you choose to work with a firm like ours, you’ll have award-winning writers and designers working for you that have decades of experience in publishing, and we handle the process from start to finish so you get to enjoy the lead-up to your anniversary rather than stressing about it.
No matter if you produce your company history book internally or with the help of experts, keep in mind that getting all your institutional memory on record is just the foundation of your project. Think of your book as a strategic tool that can serve you in many ways, such as recruiting the best talent, facilitating acquisitions, lobbying policy makers, onboarding franchisees, and winning big contracts. We even had a fast-growing national restaurant chain use their books for years after their anniversary to woo commercial leasing agents and secure the best real estate away from much bigger chains.
If you are celebrating a major milestone in the next two to three years, you have enough time to make a truly riveting (and gorgeous) book to mark the occasion. If you’d like our help (or even just our advice), drop us a line at hello@echostories.com or give us a call at 1-877-777-ECHO (3246), and we’ll be happy to share how we’ve helped clients similar to you mark their anniversary in a way that moves people’s hearts and delivers real ROI.
Anniversary Countdown: 1 Year in Advance
If your company anniversary is next year, you are likely wondering what you can reasonably accomplish during that period. While a book project typically takes longer than a year to complete (though we occasionally take on fast-turnaround book projects), you still have time to craft an awesome anniversary social campaign. If you started earlier and you’re underway with a commemorative book project, this is your window to use the content you’re gathering to build excitement on your social channels too.
“I appreciate all the time, creativity, and the brainpower you poured into our collaboration. Thanks for taking us to a higher level.”
— Michael McDonald, Director of the #AsIAm film series, L’Arche Internationale
An anniversary social campaign can do more than just mark your anniversary – it can take your social marketing to the next level. Our digital team brings a wealth of experience helping brands of all sizes increase audiences, tell meaningful stories, and achieve bold content marketing goals. With a year’s lead-time on an anniversary campaign, our team is able to dig into your brand’s core values and help you learn to tell the key stories that will take your brand to the next level.
If a social campaign doesn’t meet your content goals for the year, a celebratory anniversary video may be the right fit. We’re experts at storytelling across platforms, and videos are a great way to make an emotional impact on a large audience at a gala anniversary event, as well as featuring it on your company website as a tool to attract prospective clients and talent for years to come.
Planning for Your Company Anniversary: 3-6 Months in Advance (eek!)
It’s not too late to do something amazing for your company’s anniversary, but now you need to get cracking. Here again, a digital anniversary campaign is the solution. Start gathering resources for the campaign immediately. Reach out to the self-appointed history keepers in your company (every business has them!) and ask them for all of their best photographs and memorabilia. Talk to the longest-serving employees and the newest hires. Tip: ask them to share a story of a time they or one of their colleagues demonstrated one of your company’s core values in action, especially if they used it to overcome a challenging moment in your history.
We’re more than happy to help with quick campaigns, but the more you can do right away to start finding these key stories and images, the more successful a last-minute campaign will be.
Whatever the timeframe, our expert storytellers are here to help you turn your history into a catalyst for sales, customer engagement, and employee engagement. The above guidelines are exactly that: guidelines. We pride ourselves on being flexible, and creating custom services that fit the specific needs of our clients and accomplish their most pressing goals.
No matter how you proceed, we send you a big high-five on your upcoming anniversary. It takes a mountain of hard work, creativity, and gumption to make a company that lasts, and you should be immensely proud that you and your people have done it. We sure hope that you are able to take the time to celebrate this achievement with those who matter most to you.
If you have a company anniversary coming up soon or way down the road, we’re here for you. Tell us who you are and what you want to achieve by email at hello@echostories.com or by phone at 1-877-777-3246. You only get one chance to mark this milestone so let us help you do it right!
