This page contains a number of articles we hope you will find of interest. Please scroll down to find the articles that you want.
What 'Dancing With The Stars' can teach you about marketing your event on the Web
How to select the right company anniversary events
URI College of Nursing 60th Anniversary
Get your best ROI with event marketing
Your company anniversary - 7 keys to success
"It's about the brand," Owens tells Boston College Group
Market your company's past as if your company's future depended upon it.
Owens Marketing Group affiliates with Kullberg Consulting Group
What 'Dancing With The Stars' can teach you about marketing your event on the Web
By Michelle Girasole and Ken Owens
What can “Dancing with the Stars” teach you about making your next event a success?
ABC TV’s hit show dramatically demonstrates that using the Internet for promotion is critical to successfully promoting your event and is integral to creating a long-range marketing impact.
ABC promotes the broadcasts of live events on its website and uses multiple means to drive people there. The site contains content (text and video) about the show, its cast, and weekly outcomes that you can’t get by watching the TV show.
Whether you promote live or Internet events, such as TV shows, trade shows, live seminars, web chats or webcasts, sports clinics and more use your website. Learn from ABC and look to the Internet to help you create an interested audience.
Just don’t expect to do it overnight
You must start well in advance of your event. We suggest you begin now to plan an event ten months out. Decide what that event will be, how it is useful to your current and future customers, how people will participate and who they might be.
Then, over the first three months build or re-build your web presence. It’s neither as good as you think, nor as good as your brother tells you.
Consider having your site analyzed by pros who understand both marketing and the Web. Make sure it is a solid business tool, is believable and extends your branding posture to each of your audiences, including customers, prospects, the press, financial markets and employees. In short, make sure it tells your story well.
Build it from the customer’s viewpoint
The first rule is build your website from your customer’s point of view. Your website helps provide visitors with a deeper understanding of your expertise and what it means for them. It must educate them and at the same time, peak their interest to learn more.
When these visitors engage with you by providing their contact info, they become new leads, giving your sales force the opportunity to learn about potential clients before a sales call. This gives you a distinct competitive advantage – and an open door for future communications about your company and event.
Look at and assess your site content. First, make sure you are using “customer speak,” not “company speak.” Assure that your site is content-rich so that it will draw people to it and offer opportunity for interaction. Include articles and links.
To get the website design and content right, marketing must work with sales and both must work with your information technology resource, internal or external. Structure your site to generate traffic – being sure to include search engine-friendly elements - and to start building conversations by giving existing customers and prospects an excuse to ask you questions, request information, or subscribe to an e-newsletter.
Build Customer Relationships
The conversations you generate through this process are preliminary to building online relationships that lead eventually to customers. This is also a way of learning what’s on the minds of current customers when a salesperson contact isn’t needed or possible.
You want to capture contact information, especially e-mail addresses, of those who come to your site. Requiring registration for white papers, newsletters and other content is one technique for acquiring that information. Send out an e-mail blast that provides new information of value to your contacts and positions you as the source of important expertise. As the date of your event draws near, send a series of email invitations: i.e., save the date, early registration, event reminders, and registration deadlines.
As an example, the American Marketing Association and ChiefMarketing.com regularly e-mail subscribers and others to participate in their Webinars about important marketing topics.
Importantly, you must track each e-mail to see if it is opened and read. Analyze fully your data and determine what changes you need to make to optimize prospect and customer interest. This is where many companies fail. They don’t analyze their data. Make changes and send out another e-mail blast. Analyze the results and tweak your site once again.
See where this is going? Take action. Analyze the data. Improve your site. And do it again. The goal is to hone this process until you create an online environment that promotes conversations and relationships with clients and potential clients.
Build a Steady Stream of Customers
During the second three months of this process, begin some solid Search Engine Marketing (SEM). This includes researching your keywords, your competition’s websites and employing two approaches to getting your site placed on the top pages of search listings for each keyword phrase.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of putting a target keyword into strategic places on a page of your website - and building incoming links to that page from other sites - in order for it to rank highly on the free, or “organic” side of the search listings.
Search Engine Advertising (SEA) is a paid or sponsored listing on one of the advertising networks, such as Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing. As your event date moves closer, you may want to use SEA for important keywords that would attract your target audience. You have full control over the budget and the content of these ads. SEA can connect you quickly to the right customer who is searching for something you can provide.
When you have placed your site in the search engines, use the next three months to promote your event. You want to generate a qualified and interested target audience for your events. The day after the season debut of “Dancing with the Stars,” a Google search brought up a paid ad as well as the organic link to the ABC website.
In addition to Internet advertising, and depending upon the nature and location of your event, consider other media such as radio or print advertising and direct mail, i.e., personalized letters to your current and potential client list and your list of “influentials.” Once again, send more e-mail blasts to your e-mail list. Make your website central to audience response.
One political wag said that it takes eight contacts with a potential voter just to make an impression. Don’t think your job is any easier. Plan on multiple contacts to make an impact.
Track your ROI
When the date comes, hold your event and track the results. These include the number of persons who attended, who they were and whether they are potential customers, any conversations begun and the ultimate indicator of ROI (Return on Investment), “conversions” - any new clients acquired or sales made.
Once you have analyzed the data from the event, immediately make any appropriate changes to your website (SEO) and begin planning your next event. You don’t need to wait as long for the next event because your site is ready and you have valuable experience and knowledge you can use in planning and pulling off your next event, as well as an expanded e-mail list.
A consistent theme in this process is to use all the data available to you. Understand what it really means. Analyze the web addresses of those who visit your site. Know how they got to your site. If it was from a search through one of the search engines, what terms did they search? Did they come to you through your advertising, direct mail or links with other sites?
When you analyze fully the data available to you and use it effectively, you can continue to optimize your site, hone your events, and, eventually bridge the gap and develop the conversations that lead to relationships and eventually to sales.
So the next time you go online to learn more about the dancers or to vote for one of them look at the way “Dancing with the Stars” uses its website to help drive attendance at its live TV events. And then make this work for you.
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The authors. Michelle Girasole is president of Precision Web Marketing, New England Division, www.PrecisionROI.com, a full-service Internet marketing agency that provides comprehensive research, strategy, implementation, results tracking, and analysis services in the online arena.
Ken Owens is president of Owens Marketing Group, www.OwensMarketingGroup.com, and develops and implements public relations, marketing and event marketing strategies for both corporate and not-for-profit.
Both are members of the Kullberg Consulting Group (KCG), www.KullbergConsultingGroup.com, a twelve year old unique strategic alliance of sixty senior level professionals, representing all disciplines of marketing communications, who own their own businesses, but come together to work on KCG assignments as needed.
How to Select the Right Company Anniversary Events
By Ken Owens
What are the best corporate anniversary events for your organization? For most people, this is a tough question to answer.
If you ask two additional questions, you make the decision easier:
Whom do I have to reach?
What do I need to tell them?
In other words, who are my audiences and what are my messages?
These questions are not always asked, even in the best organizations.
Recently, I met with a large, very successful company that is preparing to celebrate a milestone company anniversary. To do so, they will design several events for employees and other audiences.
When I asked what messages they would deliver, they stunned me by saying that to convey messages through their events was beyond the scope of the celebration.
They are going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to celebrate, but can’t articulate what they hope to accomplish by these events.
To get event ROI, know what you want to accomplish
Without knowing what you hope to accomplish with your anniversary events, you can’t possibly know how to design those events. Nor will you be able to judge the success of those events.
When we helped the College of Nursing at the University of Rhode Island celebrate its 60th anniversary, their events delivered to a variety of constituents the message that the College has been educating nursing leaders for 60 years and is extremely well positioned to continue to do so.
Over the course of the year, events to deliver that message included a kickoff dinner for friends of the college, a daylong classroom and social event for alumni and a successful fundraising gala for the public supported by a wonderfully diverse group of people and organizations.
Even the event venue can play a critical part in delivering your message.
Sevenson Environmental Services, headquartered in Niagara Falls, NY, transformed its equipment garage into a marvelous location for a formal party for 500 with a stage and live music, video, full dinner and participation by employees.
Red Hat, which bills itself as “The world's most trusted provider of Linux and open source technology,” celebrated its 10th anniversary with a worldwide tour in which executives held forums and met one-on-one with customers to learn from them what they wanted from Red Hat for the future. Red Hat reported getting a greater sense of their users, as well as now having more feeling and passion for their work.
Harman Kardon, one of the world’s most recognized names in high-quality home entertainment products, thought a beefed up presence at a trade show in Berlin was the right place to kick off the celebration of their first 50 years and talk about their plans for the future.
Kelly Services captured USA Today’s attention, and the world's, when it wrapped its 10-story headquarters in a 50th anniversary bow.
Then, a team of caterers, florists, decorators, entertainers and technical production staff transformed Kelly Services’ parking lot into a 1946 diner complete with a malt shop, gum-chewing waitresses, vintage automobiles, and USO-style dancers for more than 1,100 employees and local dignitaries.
Each of these events conveyed the companies understanding of their audiences and the messages they wanted to convey. The events grew out of this understanding.
Celebrities add Pizzazz
Ours is a country of celebrity watchers, for good or ill. Take advantage of that fact when you design your event. Some of my experiences with John Hancock Financial Services are dramatic examples of the excitement celebrities generate.
We put our sales people on the golf course and then on the ball field with former baseball greats like Jim Rice and Johnny Bench and many more. There were many sore muscles, and a lot of life-long memories.
Former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher posed for photos with our sales people and then held them spellbound with her remarks for over an hour as sharpshooters kept guard from the spotlight towers.
Guests literally ran to get the best seats when they learned that Ray Charles was to be the entertainment for a sales convention’s final night.
When Senator George Mitchell, Chairman of the Northern Ireland Peace Negotiations, spoke to our guests at an event in Ireland, it provided a rare and intimate glimpse into a world-changing event.
The room was full of affection, and the atmosphere electric, when former President Ronald Reagan addressed a group of our top salespeople and took their questions.
The crowd went wild when host Duke Snider introduced Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays as they walked up the center aisle of the hotel ballroom. On the stage, to the delight of the audience, they bantered with each other and presented awards to our guests.
Olympic gymnasts Blaine Wilson and Shannon Miller signed autographs and posed for photos for hours with our guests at an event co-sponsored with INC Magazine.
Ask the Questions First
Many organizations can help you create an event. But you have to know your audiences and what you want to say to them. There are even companies to help you determine who your audiences are, and other companies to help you craft your messages. Only occasionally are they the same company.
An effective event strategy integrates your anniversary activities into your overall branding, marketing and communications efforts and enhances them. Your events are not one-off happenings, but integral to your marketing success.
So ask the questions first. With the answers you can create the exciting events that are not only fun to attend, but are effective in conveying your critical messages to the right audiences.
The College of Nursing at the University of Rhode focused its 60th anniversary celebration on the future and on the contributions the college continues to make to healthcare in Rhode Island and elsewhere.
According to Ken Owens, president of Owens Marketing Group and chair of the yearlong anniversary effort, “The strategy, developed more than a year in advance, was to demonstrate the College is both relevant and prepared for its continuing leadership role in nursing because of its history and the vision of its leadership.”
The college also used the anniversary year to increase its profile with its constituency, and reach an entirely new audience, according to the college dean, Dayle Joseph.
Through public relations, advertising, internet, promotional materials, and numerous marketing events, and with a tip of its hat to its memorable past, the college stated clearly that it is well positioned to tackle the considerable challenges ahead in nursing education.
Logo and Theme
Planning took over a year. Joseph and Owens introduced the important anniversary logo and theme at a special event.
Preparing Nursing Leaders for 60 years,” provided an identity for the college, a shorthand to tell the college’s story, and unified all the year’s activities.
The college promoted the anniversary, beginning even before the official kickoff.
Owens said, “Dean Joseph used every spoken and written opportunity to highlight the college’s anniversary and accomplishments and vision for the future. Her personal outreach was extraordinary and included media appearances and meetings with the administration of many of the state’s hospitals.”
The Office of University Advancement and the Alumni Association enthusiastically supported the College’s efforts.
Communications included an on-line chat by the dean, her appearance on TV to discuss the critical shortage of nurses, a “coffee cup salute” on local TV, and a televised story about the college.
A TV spot featured the college. News coverage promoted all anniversary events, research grants and programs in commercial media and university print and e-mail publications and on the Alumni Association website.
Alumni of the College returned for a daylong program that highlighted changes since their days at the college and encouraged their continued participation.
These new efforts increased the breadth and depth of its fundraising.
During this milestone celebration, the college raised nearly $250,000. According to Dean Joseph, this is more than twice any previous single effort, and created the internal organization needed to undertake continuing fundraising.
Too Marvelous For Words!
The culmination was a gala celebration, Too Marvelous for Words!, attended by nearly 350 people, the RI Governor and first lady, a US Senator, the university president, corporate sponsors, alumni and both old and new “Friends” of the college.
The college ended the year as it began it, with a look to the future
“Ken Owens has been the backbone of the entire anniversary year program, and especially the gala,” commented Dean Joseph. “He deserves all the credit for putting together a marvelous evening.”
And, Dean Joseph said, “We accept the challenge to continue the relationships created this year, to communicate our message to both old and new constituents, and to harness the support necessary to continue to prepare tomorrow’s nursing leaders.”
Event and sponsorship marketing is the single most effective way to reach and move audiences.
That, according to PROMO magazine, which said events provide the best return on investment of any promotional tactic.
So what are you waiting for? Figure out how you can use events to reach your constituents. Start the process now to use events that generate a vibrant, emotional connection with customers and potential customers, events that build employee pride and passion.
Events can be successful in driving your marketing communications in ways that traditional media cannot.
Generate understanding and involvement
When John Hancock became an Olympic sponsor, we quickly moved to garner the support of our employees so they would understand why precious resources were being directed to this sponsorship.
Half a dozen Olympic athletes, including the great runner, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and basketball standout, Rebecca Lobo, came to meet our employees, playing twice to full houses in the company auditorium. Highlight videos introduced the athletes who spoke from the stage, then greeted and autographed photos for hundreds of our employees.
An employee survey revealed 85% of John Hancock employees were pleased to work for John Hancock “because of the company’s Olympic sponsorship.”
A similar program for field agents resulted in even stronger returns with 92% feeling positive about working for John Hancock, and 99% of the company’s top producers proud to be associated with the company because of its Olympic sponsorship.
If you are not introducing an Olympic sponsorship, when should you use events?
When should I use events?
You should use events when you want to communicate in personal, powerful, interactive ways.
Use events to:
Introduce a new product or service or product upgrade
Announce a new company initiative
Expand into new territories
Integrate the employees of newly acquired or merged companies
Celebrate a company anniversary
Enhance the reputation of your CEO and yor company
Provide product information to people who use your products
Celebrate a successful quarter or year or the completion of a project
Target your marketing
Position your company as a community leader
In other words, use events when you market your company.
Events are about interaction between you and your audience, so look carefully at how you structure that contact. For example, many effective sports marketing activities include the opportunity to meet sports celebrities.
Nothing beats the personal touch
People love to meet stars, and a great many of our promotions put our guests in direct contact with well-known athletes. Our guests met former Red Sox greats and had baseballs signed by them. Others played a par three hole against an active PGA tour pro at a golf outing. Still others mixed with Olympic gymnasts at our sponsored party at INC Magazine’s annual get together. There is nothing like creating that personal experience for your guests.
Your competitors may already be employing events for their marketing. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store took its chuck wagon on the road with a tour by Grammy award-winning artists Alison Krauss and Union Station. And Wella and Sebastian combined for a 10-city tour in which models show off the latest hairstyles and makeup products for salon owners.
Design events for your specific audiences
Sometimes you will develop events that reach a very small, specific audience, for example, electro-chemical engineers who use your product. Or your audience may be broader based, perhaps parents of young children.
To reach young parents, Fisher-Price developed its 75th Anniversary Celebration 12-city tour that features two 60' x 60' traveling play areas. Company spokesperson: "It helps parents remember how special the Fisher-Price experience was for them and how meaningful it still is for their children."
Other audiences might include the opinion leaders and government officials who can have major impact upon your endeavors.
According to a PROMO survey, brand marketers spent $166 billion on events in 2004, an increase of 9% from the year before. That’s billions spent using events and sponsorships to drive marketing communications.
Funding requires creativity
Be creative in how you resolve your concerns about funding events. An analysis will show budget funds you currently spend that you can divert into events: advertising and direct mail expenditures, a monthly newsletter, counter cards, the boxes of logoed mugs in the warehouse.
If you cannot demonstrate the value of any of these current endeavors to your bottom line, move those funds into the powerful field of event marketing.
Make events part of your total marketing strategy, not add-ons, or “feel good” activities. Integrate them fully into your marketing goals and they will effectively develop and cement your brand in your customers’ minds and hearts.
You are not changing your audiences, you are just rethinking how best to reach and move them to action.
Throw your support behind a cause
Consider also tying your organization to finding a solution to a significant problem. Cause-branding guru, Carol Cone, says, “Now, more than ever, corporations and nonprofits are realizing the power of aligning companies and causes…with significant bottom-line and community impacts.”
The Home Depot helps KaBOOM build playgrounds and Habitat for Humanity build houses. And Avon elevated its image immeasurably, and raised tremendous amounts of money to eradicate breast cancer, with the annual Avon Walk for Breast Cancer.
How do you create a powerful, effective and efficient events marketing program? First, don’t throw it on an already overworked marketing department. Or if you do, get them outside, experienced professional help who can do more for you then just plan the annual company picnic.
Get help to do it right
This is about finding a company who can think and plan and act strategically to incorporate a new, long-range initiative into your existing marketing communications efforts. Find an organization that can move you quickly and decisively into this new arena.
Finally, embrace events because they provide the best ROI for your marketing communications dollar.
Measure before, during and after to verify results. This is serious business and real money, and you deserve a real, measurable return for your investment.
Events can give you that return. Get started today.
Your organization has an anniversary every year. The question is are you using this opportunity to set yourself apart from your competition? Here are seven keys to creating a successful marketing program around your upcoming corporate anniversary.
Key One: Recognize the Marketing Value of Your Corporate or Brand Anniversary
Company anniversary marketing is not about your past, nor is it “old hat” or out of date. On the contrary, it is one of the most effective marketing initiatives.
You recognize the companies and organizations that have recharged their marketing programs by focusing on their anniversaries. Companies like Ford (100) and Harley-Davidson (100) and Sports Illustrated (50) and the Principal Financial Group (125).
Many others have found the value of anniversaries that don’t round off to 25. Companies like Southwest Airlines (33), Yankee Candle (20), Old Navy (10) and Appleton Estate Jamaican Rum (155).
In fact, nearly 45% of the companies we researched are celebrating “off year” company or brand anniversaries.
Recognize that your past is the strongest criterion people have to judge your future. So use your history of success to tell clients and customers about that future and, most importantly, tell them about your place in their future.
Key Two: Get Started Now
You may have heard that Harley-Davidson began planning its 100th anniversary celebration the day after its 95th anniversary!
That tells you that it’s never too soon to get started. Because the most important thing you can do to assure success is to start planning today. Don’t limit the scope of what you can accomplish waiting to put plans in place.
Also, make sure you develop and promote a “sense of urgency” within your company about your anniversary. That urgency is an important element in a successful anniversary and can carry over into other aspects of your organization.
Key Three: Know What You Want as a Return On Investment
At the end of a year of anniversary marketing, you will want to know what you accomplished, what was your Return On Investment (ROI). This is all about measurement.
Determine the measurements that matter and find out where you are now, at the beginning. Then ask yourself the question: What has to happen over the course of this year for us to declare this effort a success? What changes in attitudes and sales do we want to accomplish with our anniversary?
Then when you are done, and if necessary, during the course of the year, measure what you have accomplished and compare this with your measurements from the beginning. That is your ROI.
It is not enough to say, “We had these events for hundreds of customers and employees, and distributed thousands of brochures." And, "Did you see our ad in the Wall Street Journal?” You must be able to measure your success.
Key Four: Involve Your Employees
When PSEG celebrated its 100th, the company asked its employees to vote on their choice for an anniversary logo. Other companies have asked for employee suggestions about how best to celebrate their anniversaries.
By asking you are seeking to make your employees full partners in the planning and execution of your company anniversary. This is an unparalleled opportunity to build employee pride and passion and to turn your most treasured asset into true brand advocates.
Gallup recently reported that if your employees were “fully engaged,” your customers would be 70% more loyal, your turnover would drop by 70%, and your profits would jump by 40%. That’s a handsome payoff for creating a true company-employee partnership!
Key Five: Think Events and Sponsorships
You can win the hearts and minds of your constituents by using events and sponsorships that deliver your message in exciting and strongly personal ways.
Events communicate your organization in ways that matter to your audiences. They are key to reaching people and involving them. Events create bonds both emotional and practical and bring an excitement not available with traditional marketing methods.
Plan events of differing sizes at different locations and spread them throughout the year. Combine your celebration with scheduled existing events such as technical forums, consumer and trade shows. And create events that have general news media interest as well.
Polaris, a major manufacturer of snowmobiles, watercraft, ATVs, utility vehicles and Victory motorcycles, with annual sales of more than $1.6 billion, took over the state fairgrounds to celebrate their 50th. More than 25,000 riding enthusiasts and music fans showed up to help them celebrate.
Key Six: Celebrate all year long.
Your anniversary marketing strategy should have a shelf life of at least a year. Don’t spend all your anniversary capital on a single event. Events and initiatives spread throughout the year, or even over 18 months, will keep interest in your company high within your various audiences, both internal and external.
Take a lead from the pages of Sports Illustrated. Partnering with Toyota, SI created a year long traveling celebration, the Toyota Presents Sports Illustrated’s 50th Anniversary Tour, a football field-size interactive site constructed state by state bringing Sports Illustrated to life for fans across the country.
Find innovative ways over the year to establish a true dialogue with your clients and customers and suppliers. Learn from them how you can help them grow and prosper, because they are the keys to your own success.
Red Hat, “The world's most trusted provider of Linux and open source technology,” celebrated its 10th with a world-wide tour in which executives held forums and met one-on-one with customers in cities across the globe. Red Hat reported getting a greater sense of their users, their needs and wants, as well as now having more feeling and passion for their own work.
Key Seven: Get help to do it right
Accept that you can’t do it alone and get help.
A successful celebration combines many elements including planning, measurement, anniversary logo development, corporate history, public relations, event creation and management, website creation or redesign, and more.
Find someone who can assist you with the planning and strategy, but who also can implement those plans for you. Your anniversary is too important to leave to an overworked marketing department or an understaffed agency.
And make sure you get objective assistance from someone whose fee isn’t dependent upon how much you spend in certain categories, such as advertising or design or printing.
In a nutshell
The most important key to a successful company anniversary celebration is the first: Recognize the Marketing Value of Your Corporate or Brand Anniversary.
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Ken is a member of the Kullberg Consulting Group (KCG) whose service, www.MarketingMilestone.com, provides effective assistance to companies celebrating company or brand anniversaries. KCG celebrated its own ten year anniversary in 2004.
It's about the brand," Owens tells Boston College Group
“For the company or organization, event and sponsorship marketing is about the brand. It is always about the brand,” Ken Owens recently told a group of graduate students at Boston College Woods College of Advancing Studies.
Owens informed the students that event and sponsorship marketing is the most effective marketing vehicle you can use to generate an emotional connection with customers and potential customers.
“Events and sponsorships add excitement to your marketing, increase brand loyalty and differentiate your company and its brand from every other.”
According to a survey recently reported in Promo Magazine,events provide the best return on investment of any promotional tactic.
Using an organization's corporate or brand anniversary is also a powerful way to promote your brand, Owens told the students.
Owens is directing the 60th anniversary marketing effort of the College of Nursing at the University of Rhode Island and has developed a year's worth of anniversary events, including a major alumni gathering and a gala fundraising party to promote the college.
"Events are the key element of the college's celebration of its milestone, " Owens said. "And the reason is simple - they are the most effective. They work."
“You must decide what you hope to gain from a sponsorship or an event before you sign a contract,” Owens said. “Doing that will go a long way toward guaranteeing your success.”
Market Your Corporate Past As If Your Corporate Future Depended Upon It!
By Ken Owens
Is your company approaching a significant historical milestone, such as a corporate or brand anniversary? If so, grab this opportunity and shout it from the highest mountain, and from your website and your advertising and your employee communications and from every possible marketing platform.
Your company is relevant with good products and services. Take this ready-made opportunity to demonstrate that relevance to customers and employees, and your board of directors. Help them see how your milestone reveals a degree of strength and expertise that is only achievable over time.
Kohler and Sons Printing of St. Louis used its 80 anniversary to talk about how its rich family heritage and tradition of excellence in the printing industry has the company perfectly positioned to serve their clients well into the 21st century.
You’re 25 All Year Long
Mark your anniversary with a yearlong celebration. To do so, your planning should be out in front of that by another six months, or even longer. As you develop your strategic plans and budget, you may want to begin with a management audit and some baseline market research so that, when the year is done, you can demonstrate the value of your investment and efforts.
Start by analyzing your major marketing concerns and how you can use this corporate milestone to address these issues. Then, with your anniversary as the starting point, design ways to pump up your marketing efforts and create fresh new ways to enhance your brand.
Ford Motor Company celebrated its 100 anniversary with a 5-day celebration at the Henry Ford World Center in Dearborn, Michigan. But the company began its planning long before.
Employees and customers submitted stories, published on the anniversary section of Ford’s website, telling how the company and its products played an important role in their lives. The website featured stories about Ford “heart and Soul” vehicles, such as the 1964 ½ Mustang.
Ford also created items for purchase featuring their specially designed anniversary logo. These included t-shirts and caps, limited edition artwork, teddy bears and a child’s wagon, “The Centennial Cub Cruiser…your child's first classic car…inspired by the 1937 Ford sedan.”
Ask Your Employees
Planning well in advance is also critical if your organization has far flung operations. You may want to solicit ideas from employees regarding the activities they would like to see the company undertake for the celebration.
You also may want to design an anniversary specific logo to use during the year. If you’re going to write a corporate history, that takes time. Further, your planning should include a full schedule of public relations and marketing efforts and events for employees, customers and the community.
Anniversaries do not need to be celebrated only in multiples of 10 or 25. If you are 33 years old, talk about being “around for a third of a century.” If you are 10 years old in an industry that is young, tout the 10 years. If you are one of the old timers in the industry, use it to your benefit.
Use The Event To Connect With Your Community
John Hancock Life Insurance Company in Boston created tremendous buzz for its brand in the community by establishing a $1 million endowment for the Boston Public Schools.
John Hancock staged a rally at its headquarters, attended by the Mayor and teachers and students from the company’s partner schools. Grants from the endowment are awarded to teachers each year, an annual reminder of John Hancock’s commitment to Boston and to education.
Motorcycle manufacturer, Harley-Davidson, ended its full year of events with the “world’s largest rolling birthday party,” a parade of 10,000 Harley-Davidson motorcycles through the streets of Milwaukee to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association, a favorite charity of Harley-Davidson.
When the St. Louis Commerce magazine celebrated its 80 anniversary in business, they ran a special issue and told the stories of area businesses – their advertisers – who were also celebrating significant anniversaries. The magazine’s website contained brief histories of these companies.
History Can Form The Basis For Trust
The marketplace is uncertain and often distrustful, so it’s critical you use every opportunity to overcome that distrust. Celebrating your corporate anniversary or brand milestone speaks to your organization’s stability and the value of your products and services, and is a good way to solidify and improve your brand among your key audiences. And you can do it in a way that drives sales.
You can develop an integrated mix of events and media, employee communications, community relations and advertising. These all work together to assure your success.
When the American International Toy Fair saw its 100 anniversary looming, they commissioned a 280 page book (for sale) that celebrated the design and play value of toys, and created a list of the century’s 100 most memorable and creative toys.
A corporate milestone truly offers you an exceptional opportunity to undertake key marketing initiatives. These can include:
Rolling out new marketing initiatives or new products
Re-stating your company’s brand
Uniting your internal audiences, including marketing and sales
Enhancing the image of your CEO
Creating employee and sales force excitement
Bonds both emotional and practical can be created with your employees, management, suppliers, existing and potential customers, even financial institutions. Opportunities abound to create a meaningful platform to help launch future success.
Celebrate your success and your survival in a tough environment. Your proud past can help ensure a successful future. For more ideas, please click on to www.MarketingMilestone.com.
Owens Marketing Group Affiliates With Kullberg Consulting Group
Owens Marketing Group (OMG) announces a new affiliation with the nationally known Kullberg Consulting Group. Ken Owens, OMG founder, has more than 25 years experience with world-class events and communications management and brand development. Owens Marketing Group focuses on event and sponsorship marketing.
All affiliated companies maintain their independence but work in concert with other marketing disciplines to integrate and maximize results for their clients. Each client gets exactly what and who is needed for each project, without paying for the huge overhead that would be required if this range and variety of seasoned professionals were on staff. To learn more, please click onto www.KullbergConsultingGroup.com.
