22 Oct Corporate Anniversaries. Turning a Glance in the Rearview Mirror Into a Vision for the Road Ahead.
By BravoEcho
We discuss why we believe it’s important to celebrate corporate anniversaries, and offer key methods and lessons from our years of experience.
For any organization, longevity can be a competitive strength. It means wisdom, expertise, and scale. But time can also bring a loss of focus leaving a longstanding incumbent vulnerable to new market forces and industry disruption.
So why, in a world seemingly rushing ahead at an ever-increasing pace, do we see value in pausing to look back?
We believe a corporate anniversary is a moment of leverage – a time to galvanize culture and move forward united. It’s an opportunity for leadership to revisit its persistent truth – the red thread that led the company in good times and downturns, bringing stability and fostering change. But, more important than nostalgia, it’s a chance to re-center the company, reframe opportunities, and ensure relevance for the future.
If a leadership team is willing to prioritize the investment in an anniversary initiative, this moment in time can positively impact a whole ecosystem – employees, customers, business partners, shareholders, the media and the general public – across geographies, languages, and brands. It represents a unique opportunity and context in which to tell the company’s story and set forth one vision for the future.
Our Approach To Telling Your Unique Story.
An anniversary is a time for both emotion and strategy. It celebrates the health of a corporate culture and an organization’s competitive resilience. Our process is inclusive and collaborative.
We begin with three fundamental questions:
1. What is the red thread that sustained and grew the enterprise while so many others failed?
2. What is the human story that flows from this red thread that everybody can identify with?
3. How can the strength of that story help drive the future of the enterprise?
For our client Steelcase – a global workspace furniture and technology designer and manufacturer – their insight-led innovation was the secret to longevity and leadership. Through our collaboration with them, their anniversary campaign and future view focused on “Unlocking Human Promise.”
For another client, Brady Corporation – a global manufacturer and marketer of systems to identify and protect premises, products, and people – success was founded on an entrepreneurial spirit that saw their systems seamlessly woven into the fabric of daily life. Our anniversary campaign and future view for them focused on “Pioneering a smarter, safer world.”
A final client example. Cummins is a power solutions leader with a history full of examples of shattering the status quo and pushing at technology’s frontier. Our anniversary campaign and future view for them urged everyone to “Challenge the Impossible.”
In each case, we engaged with key internal and external stakeholders from employees to customers to communities to investors, leveraging the anniversary initiative to build awareness, educate and inspire key stakeholders, foster engagement, and ultimately build advocacy.
And not only were we integral in setting the direction, but we also led to-market planning, creative concepting, and final execution across all touchpoints and channels.
Making It Happen.
Great plans are nothing without first-class execution. Here are valuable tips from our work over the years.
1. You can’t start planning too early. It’s a big undertaking. Starting early will allow you to integrate with your day-to-day business objectives, getting a greater return on your investment.
2. Build a centralized plan designed for local implementation. The greatest impact will come from a strong core campaign that can be leveraged by teams around the world.
3. Be smart with your budget. Allocate your spending over your planning and implementation years.
4. Strive for 100% employee engagement. Being part of a corporate anniversary is a unique opportunity and a great honor. Spread the joy.
5. Make it last. Optimize the goodwill that comes from this celebratory moment by sequencing stakeholder activities over time and creating new artifacts and memories that endure.
A Final Word – Positioning For The Future.
From celebrating yesterday to inspiring tomorrow, the anniversary initiative should shift the gaze from the rearview mirror to the road ahead. It should be based on recapturing, reimagining even, the company’s capabilities, strengths, values, and beliefs to position it for the next 100 years. We’ll end with a word from our Steelcase client reflecting on the success of their anniversary campaign, “if we hadn’t leveraged our anniversary, we wouldn’t be as future-ready as an organization.” We couldn’t agree more.