Milestone Anniversaries for Law Firms
/
I. A Powerful Visibility Tool
A milestone anniversary is a significant event which firms should utilize as a powerful visibility tool. From a marketing point of view, a milestone anniversary is important for three reasons:
1) It creates marketing opportunities to raise brand awareness. With an anniversary, law firms acquire a perfect reason to intensify marketing communications and showcase the firm’s accomplishments, knowledge, experience, market position and longevity. A firm can take advantage of the opportunity to change gears and more effectively leverage marketing to revitalize its brand.
2) It may generate new business. The world has undergone dramatic changes over the last few decades; only a relatively small of numbers firms could stand the test of time. In light of this instability, clients generally prefer to work with firms that are not only successful but also stable and dependable. For this reason, firms can use an anniversary to signal their reliability in order to both deepen its relationship with existing clients as well as attract the attention of prospective clients by learning about the firm’s unique strengths and stability.
3) It boosts employee morale. When firms celebrate a milestone anniversaries, they demonstrate to their employees that, not only are they a valued and honoured member of the team, but they are also contributing meaningful work to their organization and its purpose. The anniversary promotes pride within the firm and provides a great opportunity to further embed its core values. Furthermore, it helps create a unified team that will stand firmly in their resolve to move the firm forward.
II. However, there is no inherent meaning or value thereto
However, all firms should always bear in mind: milestone anniversaries don’t have inherent meaning or value. The time spent in business says nothing about the firm’s business model, its unique value proposition, or its standalone culture and work ethics that have attracted and retained clients for the firm throughout the years.
To make a milestone anniversary truly important, the firm should undertake meticulous analysis and planning in order to find out what is most meaningful at a certain point in time based on its strategic goals and market position. This anniversary plan should align efficiently current high-priority business goals while reinforcing the importance of heritage.
III. Keys to Success
According to research, there are two critical success factors which determine how well firms respond to this opportunity:
1) determining how to make the anniversary matter to those who matter most; and
2) interpreting the history and heritage of the organization to develop durable insights and illustrating stories, which help guide the way to the future by highlighting the uniqueness of the firm in the competitive landscape.
By addressing these two critical success factors, firms can make the anniversary a unique and meaningful expression of the organization.
IV. Best Practices
However unique is this expression, all firm anniversaries share common ingredients. Here are some best practices to keep in mind, and some shortcomings to avoid.
Best Practices
Ø Prioritize audiences and make it matter to those who matter most
Ø Align with defined organizational challenges and objectives
Ø Integrate into existing and anticipated communication, events and partnerships
Ø Tie together past, present and future with fresh, durable insight and storytelling
Ø Create a theme that unites all anniversary activities and messages and grabs people’s attention
Ø Evoke emotion through authentic iconography and people and their stories
Ø Be bigger than your organizational perspective; put your story in context
Ø Build involvement and interaction vs. one-way communication
Ø Plan and allocate resources
What to Avoid
Ø Rush to familiar tactics and methods with no detailed planning
Ø Begin planning too late
Ø Lack of defined target audiences
Ø Inconsistent messaging and presentation across the firm
Ø No substantive content to substantiate key differentiation messages and evoke emotion
Ø Lots of disconnected tactics
Ø No clear idea of ROI
Ø Too much emphasis on birthday and celebration
Ø Imbalance of past vs. future
V. The Challenge
One of the greatest challenges that organizations face when preparing for an anniversary is the lack of familiarity with this type of planning and execution. To offset this inexperience, organizations should rely on a process of strategic planning consisting of strategy frameworks and other analytical tools to create a master plan that can capture all the values that an anniversary initiative can offer to the firm.
References:
Risepeople.com (2018). How Celebrating Workplace Milestones Improves Employee Engagement. [online] Rise. Available at: https://risepeople.com/blog/how-celebrating-workplace-milestones-improves-employee-engagement.
Spiewak, M. (2015). Party On: Plan a PR/Marketing Campaign to Celebrate a Corporate Anniversary - SMPS Boston. [online] SMPS Boston. Available at: http://smpsboston.org/communications/party-plan-prmarketing-campaign-celebrate-corporate-anniversary.
The History Factory. (2018). Opportunity and Challenge: Corporate Anniversaries - The History Factory. [online] Available at: https://www.historyfactory.com/opportunity-challenge-corporate-anniversaries.