Celebrating a business anniversary

Business anniversaries can be tricky things to celebrate. Especially if you are a b2b company, like a manufacturer or a logistics company.  “What on earth can we say about it?” is a common question I get asked. “It’s only an anniversary.”

Well, in PR, we’re always looking for ways to communicate with your customers, employees and potential customers… and something like a significant anniversary is a great reason to start that conversation. Those significant anniversary’s, for PR purposes, tend to be years 5, 10, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50 and so on, in multiples of 10.

And just to get some ideas going, here are 25 things you might to do for a 25th anniversary:

1. Tell your staff – hold a special meeting, or series of meetings. This is something to celebrate
2. Create an email footer with the anniversary on it- so even if you forget, it gets included in all your outgoing emails
3. Organise promotional gifts to celebrate the occasion.
4. Create some literature detailing your company’s history to date
5. Produce lapel pins for all staff
6. Have a party
7. Make sure your stationery mentions  the anniversary
8. Put a news story in your employee magazine
9. Let your local press know about it
10. Create a news story for your trade press
11. Find out what was going on in the world 25 years ago.. and put it on your blog
12. Create a special edition (whatever it is you make) to recognise the anniversary
13. Have an open day, and show customers the progress you’ve made
14. think about what you want to achieve in the next 25 years – and write it down
15. Organise new photography to record the people and processes in this landmark year
16. Launch a new charity initiative – and do something like raising £25K to celebrate 25 years in business
17. Take out some banner ads in your key online titles and in printed media
18. Put up a webpage looking at key landmark events for your business over this time
19. Send out a newsletter to your customers
20. Find photos from 25 years ago, and share them on a pinterest page
21. Make a special offer to customers in honour of the anniversary
22. Create content for your website about the team from 25 years ago
23. Make sure your systems are up to date, and don’t hark back 25 years
24. Create an info graphic timeline
25. Record a video celebrating your company’s achievements

Having been in business successfully for a number of years is definitely something to feel proud about – so don’t hide your light under a bushel. Get out there and start celebrating it!

If you’ve enjoyed this post, you might like to read some of our other posts: measuring the ROI on PR or maximising the  PR opportunities of winning awards

If you’ve enjoyed this post, please add your comments below… I’d love to hear how you celebrated your business anniversary.

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