We all love to celebrate. Holidays, birthdays, or even just the end of a week are all the reasons we need to get together with our friends and loved ones, crank up the karaoke machine, and have a party. But our biggest celebrations tend to occur around the times of major milestones: births, graduations, weddings – and anniversaries.
As a business owner, you may not necessarily get much chance to celebrate some of these milestones (to date, we’ve never heard of a company graduating from high school), but that’s not to say that your organization won’t have reason to celebrate. As your company nears a significant anniversary – 10 years in business, 25 years, etc. – you may consider using your upcoming milestone to reinforce your marketing strategies with high-value practices that only become available every few years.
Here are some suggestions that your favorite marketing firm (hint, hint) can help you bring to life for your corporate anniversaries.
Pick Your Anniversary
Making a milestone anniversary into a significant marketing push starts with a reasonably easy step: figuring out when you want to celebrate. Most companies follow human nature and select nice, round numbers to highlight: 10 years, 15 years, 20 years… you see where we’re going with this.
But there’s nothing to say you can’t break the mold. Imagine being in the marketing department at the HJ Heinz Company in 1926 – would you have been able to resist putting together a massive celebration for the company’s 57th year? Or at Baskin-Robbins when they celebrated their 31st birthday in 1976?
If there’s a number that has unique significance to your company, nothing is stopping you from making that year’s anniversary into a major event.
The other aspect is deciding how long you want the celebration to last. Most milestone anniversary marketing events last an entire year, providing the maximum opportunity to capitalize on 12 months of special offers, events, and campaigns. If a whole year’s worth of celebrations isn’t in the cards, select a period that will complement your campaign. For instance, if you sell swimwear in Wisconsin, February might not be the best time for your 20th anniversary sales.
Make a lo- Hire M&R Marketing to Design a Logo
The cornerstone of your company’s anniversary celebration will be the special logo you’re going to contact your friends at M&R to design for you. Your anniversary logo should integrate either your primary logo or enough design elements from your initial logo to make it unmistakably yours. Here are some examples that M&R has designed for client anniversaries:
Your logo needs to incorporate two elements and possibly a third:
- Big numbers. There’s no fancy, buzz-y way to say it. Your anniversary logo should have your company’s anniversary as its most prominent element. But, come on, you already knew that.
- Concise messaging. A long explanation here seems counterproductive.
- And, if you’re feeling up to it (or if the talented designers at M&R include it), a date showing when your business was established.
While all of the examples above incorporate the company’s standard logo into the anniversary design, there’s no requirement to do so. The primary key is that your anniversary logo incorporates enough design cues from your primary logo to be recognizably yours.
Use That Logo!
Now that the talented designers at M&R have created a dazzling anniversary logo, it’s time to put your new design to work. There’s almost no place where your new anniversary logo can’t be used effectively, but there are some things you may want to watch out for when you’re deciding how to leverage this piece of marketing collateral.
Your Anniversary Only Lasts 12 Months
No matter how much you love your anniversary logo, remember that it will only be useful for about 12 months. That’s not a problem when using your ad in digital media, where it’s easy to take down the new one and return it to your standard logo when the anniversary year is over.
The thing you need to look out for is when you’re ordering physical items with the logo printed on them. Be intentional in choosing which items to order and the quantities in which to order them. Let’s say you want to have bags printed so that each customer who leaves your store takes their products out the door in a custom-printed bag.
If you usually go through 100,000 bags a year, this is not the time to get optimistic and order a million anniversary-logo bags.
Can It Stand Alone?
Should you use your new logo by itself, or must it be married to the standard logo?
Suppose your anniversary logo is just a minor modification to your standard logo, or it very clearly contains enough design elements from your standard design to be instantly recognizable. In that case, you can probably use the anniversary logo as a direct replacement for the primary logo in almost every use case.
However, suppose your anniversary logo is less clear on whose anniversary is being celebrated. In that case, you’ll need to make sure that it’s always married to your primary logo to ensure there’s no confusion. Consider this 70th-anniversary logo:
If you’ve spent any time repairing shop tools or heavy-duty equipment around Middle Georgia, you might recognize the black-and-gold sprocket as part of the original logo of Bearings & Drives, now B&D Industrial, a manufacturer of bearings, drivetrains, and other industrial components. If you’re not a regular B&D customer, this logo might leave you at a loss unless it’s paired with the company’s primary logo or wordmark.
Bonus: Time for a Rebrand?
If you’ve been considering a rebrand for a while and you’re approaching an anniversary, this may be a great time to go out with the old and in with the new. Use the anniversary logo as a transition – design it or have it designed so that it contains elements from both the new and the old logo, and when your anniversary is over, launch the new logo.
Have You Got an Anniversary Coming Up? Let M&R Help You Celebrate With a Custom Anniversary Logo: Call Us at 478-621-4491!
It’s your party all year long; you might as well make it memorable. Our designers can work with you to craft a meaningful, effective anniversary logo to make your company’s special occasion pop! Contact one of our friendly account managers today with your questions.
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We love good design, and we’re sharing that love this summer. Since June, we’ve been sharing tips, information, and best practices for using high-quality graphic design to build and promote your business.
Other posts in this series:
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- Want to Spread Your Message? Don’t Ignore Your Message Design
- How Branding and Graphic Design Has Served Abbeville Commissioning in South Georgia
- How To Enhance Your Digital Ads with High-Quality Visuals
- What Do Your Brand Fonts Say to Your Audience?
- 4 Graphic Design Facts That Can Help Boost Your Business