Your company is turning 25 (or 10 or 50!) next year and needs some PR around the anniversary, but a momentum release doesn’t quite cut it. Without any concrete news timing with the anniversary, how else can you promote this milestone? Reaching out to editors close to the company and social media posts announcing the anniversary may seem like a given, but that’s just scratching the surface.

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5 Ways to Promote a Company’s Anniversary

1. Plan internal and external celebrations to thank employees & customers

The most important part of celebrating an anniversary is thanking the people who made it possible: your employees and customers. Their engagement is what will help you reach your next milestone, so make sure they feel as much a part of this one as your leadership team does. Teams don’t need to be in-person to celebrate together either – almost all of these suggestions can be adapted to be virtual.

Here are some fun ways to celebrate internally with your employees:

• Host a company-wide lunch in the office, or in remote work times, encourage teams to get together for a virtual meal sponsored by your company.
• Design fun branded swag to send out to your employees. Water bottles? Socks? Stress balls? A little bit of thought can go a long way!
• Plan employee competitions to spark engagement (and User Generated Content!). Company trivia, virtual escape rooms or scavenger hunts are great ways to get employees involved in events on a large scale, and they’re great both in-office and virtually!
• Offer a day off, early-close Friday’s or another token of appreciate for your staff’s continued hard work.

Here are a few ways to recognize your customers:

• Send out email communications about the anniversary in your monthly newsletter to let customers know you’ve reached the milestone.
• Share the most memorable campaigns or customer engagements from over the years on social.
  • Did an influencer help promote your brand in a cool way? Did your customer help spark change or make an impact on the community through your product or service?
• Share branded swag and gifts with customers too – who doesn’t like free stuff?
• Consider some kind of promotional offer for customers.
  • Think: discount codes, invites to a knowledge sharing event or a free trial of a new product or service that you’re offering.
• Make a charitable donation in your company’s name.
  • Have customers or employees choose a charity, or a few, and make a donation. Gaslowitz Frankel allowed each staff member to choose a program and afterwards donated as a whole.

2. Infographic on company history

Take a trip down memory lane, and use an infographic to show how the company has grown over time. Whether you’ve started with one product and evolved into a portfolio of products, or began with a small pool of beta users and now have customers worldwide, visual representation of growth catches the eye. Promote this infographic on social channels and share with editors as a supplement to their articles.

Take Airbnb, for example, whose infographic takes us through its evolution, starting at the very beginning when two San Francisco residents couldn’t afford their rent, through their rounds of funding.

3. Social promotion of company celebrations

With a company anniversary usually comes some internal celebrations. Whether it be a speech from the CEO, dinner, or party, use this as an opportunity to capture the company culture on social media. Encourage employees to tweet during the event: photos of people enjoying themselves, quotes from the speaker and shout-outs to the event planner.

This type of promotion should also be reflected on the company pages. Share photos on LinkedIn to give potential recruits a glimpse into what working at your company looks like, and show customers that they’re supporting a company that cares about their employees. Advocacy can greatly impact the success of your brand.

For example, PAN celebrated the one-year anniversary of the acquisition of Vantage PR with a video detailing the past year and a blog post detailing lessons learned from the acquisition. On top of this content, we had a celebration in each office equipped with champagne and Fitbits for all. We documented this celebration and shared pictures on our personal social platforms, making our outside networks aware of the party.

Like PAN’s celebration, these suggestions work for company milestones beyond just anniversaries.

4. Pitch a CEO profile

Put the focus on the leader that got the company to where it is now: the CEO. Why are they passionate about their field of work? What personal experiences led them down this path? Do they have a unique leadership style other CEOs can learn from? Any major company accomplishments under their leadership?

These are all differentiators you can use to make the CEO stand out through executive thought leadership. Take San Diego-based GreatCall, for instance, a connected health company that recently celebrated its 10^th anniversary. David Inns, CEO, led the company to raise over $75 million in venture funding in its early years and more recently to acquisitions and partnerships with well-known companies like Lively and Lyft. This approach to outreach resulted in a CEO profile in Xconomy San Diego.

5. Share an Article on industry changes and predictions

So, the client has been in the industry for two decades now. They’ve seen some things over the years. Use this company milestone as a chance to reflect on how the industry has evolved, what major events and advances have caused changes in the industry, and what the expert expects to see in the next one, five or 10 years.

These types of stories are common around the new year, but company anniversaries are the perfect chance to repurpose that commentary. Turn those points into a byline article for a trade publication, develop a blog post to drive website traffic, or pitch as a feature story.

For instance, Ofer Amitai, CEO of cyber security company Portnox, reflected on the growth of IoT and shared predictions on how this growth will create security risks in the new year with Information Age, timed with the company’s 10^th anniversary.

Interested in learning more? Check out the below content:

• Considering a Remote Work Strategy? This Checklist Might Help
• How to Boost Employee Engagement in a Remote Workforce
• The 3 Hottest Topics in PR Research
• Why Every CMO Should Be Leveraging PR Across Integrated Marketing
• How to Utilize Social Media Across Your PR Strategies