What corporate comms teams need to know about awareness days
Annual observance events often give comms teams content inspiration, providing a ‘news hook’ that helps them add value to ongoing conversations. Marking annual events, such as Pride Month and National Apprenticeship Week, can be an important way for brands to showcase their journey and progress in specific areas – but comms teams need to prove that their coverage is more than a tick-box exercise.
A steady stream of timely and engaging articles is naturally a top priority for most comms teams, ensuring that there is a regular drumbeat of content to publish on their channels.
To help achieve this, they may look to a ‘news hook’ – a nugget of information that gives a topic a greater sense of urgency for a target audience and contributes to a current conversation. One type of story peg often used by brands is awareness events – such as Pride Month, National Apprenticeship Week or Armed Forces Day.
Often launched by relevant charities, businesses or organisations, these events (which can last a day, week or month) are opportunities to mark and reflect on important occasions, communities, business areas or causes. They can span a variety of industry sectors from fashion and facilities management to healthcare and horticulture – and take place throughout the year.
While some might be sector-specific (think World Agriculture Day!), there are other national and global awareness events that comms teams will already be aware of. Take International Women’s Day (IWD), for example, which occurs every year on 8 March. It celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women – and focuses on ongoing issues such as gender inequity.
Awareness events seek to shine a light on important topics – but there is growing concern about how brands are covering them. Many companies are quick to publish content showing support for IWD, for instance – but some do so in a surface-level way.
This has not gone unnoticed, with some critics suggesting that IWD is at risk of becoming a corporate version of Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day – as opposed to giving visibility to the efforts and achievements of females around the world.
Seek inspiration – but proceed with caution
Being mindful of awareness days and incorporating them into wider corporate comms strategies could help your organisation connect with internal talent and raise the profile of relevant brand strategies and initiatives. However, companies must tread carefully when it comes to this content.
Coverage can’t be a tick box exercise – otherwise, you’ll run the risk of being seen as ‘jumping on the bandwagon’ without any substance behind your words. Posting Pride-related content if you don’t have strong diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies and a supportive culture for LGBT+ colleagues is grounds for ‘rainbow washing’ accusations. Never use these events as publicity stunts – it will do your company’s reputation no favours.
Instead, make sure your approach is carefully considered. Ask how the day is relevant to your customers, employees and business. Why is it important that you contribute? Give thought to the tone of your output. Ensure you’re not restricting your content output around a certain area solely for an awareness day.
All your content should be supported by strong evidence of real strategy, data and engagement across all levels of your business. If you’re working to make improvements to your approach, be honest about this – and share the plans the company is putting in place to make changes. Your audience can easily open a new Google tab to find out the reality of the situation – so empty phrases won’t cut it.
Awareness day coverage means nothing without action. Ultimately, whether you share an article, video or social post, your team must demonstrate that it is underpinned by a genuine strategy and long-term commitments that seek to drive positive change – and explain how these issues are on your brand’s radar throughout the year.
View our awareness days calendar
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Find out how Speak can help your brand plan, produce and distribute standout content – contact Gabrielle Bridle from our client services team at gabriellebridle@speakmedia.co.uk or on LinkedIn.