Author: David Parry

If you’re planning, or even just considering a business anniversary celebration, you may already be aware of an overwhelming array of options and suggestions. These range from opulent black-tie events to more subdued gatherings. They also run the gamut from corporate retreats to charitable initiatives to carnivals to open houses—and dozens of other possibilities. Obviously, a number of factors will influence how, and even if, an observance might be appropriate. These include your organization’s financial health, its size, its mission, industry conditions, logistics, and how much time—and money—can reasonably be budgeted.

The purpose of this post is not to provide yet another list of ideas for business anniversary observances. Again, there are already a number of valuable articles and resources devoted to that topic.

This post will focus instead on some preliminary considerations you might want to keep in mind in approaching a business anniversary—and regardless of the size or nature of that celebration.  And these initial considerations are relevant whether the upcoming milestone marks your organization’s 100th anniversary or its first. These tips are also helpful whether your budget will allow you to spend lavishly or only frugally.

1) Make Your Business Anniversary About More Than Your Business

Your business or organization should, by definition, be the centerpiece of your anniversary celebration.

But that doesn’t mean that it should be the exclusive focus.

Anniversary celebrations can often come across as too insular and self-absorbed. This inward focus can undercut interest in your celebration outside your organization and even stymie enthusiasm within it.

Mullerhaus, a firm that specializes in company brand storytelling, urges a broader perspective. Your celebration should be about more than the staying power of your company or organization. It should also be about the relationships that characterized and made possible, its longevity, and its success. These include relationships not only with staff, but also customers, community members, and those communities themselves.

2) Tap Into Employee and Manager Creativity

One of the best ways to ensure your business anniversary celebration feels meaningful and authentic is to actively include the perspectives of your employees and managers. After all, no one knows your organization’s culture, quirks, and daily triumphs better than the people who help drive its success every day.

Opening the floor for suggestions can spark ideas you may not have considered—from small but heartfelt gestures, to larger initiatives that celebrate collective achievements. Consider holding brainstorming sessions or setting up a simple online suggestion box to gather input. You might be surprised at the ingenuity and insight your team brings forward.

Ultimately, celebrating together and giving your staff a personal investment in the festivities can foster enthusiasm, deepen the sense of shared pride, and make the occasion truly memorable for everyone involved.

3) Highlight Your Business Anniversary Online

Marking your business anniversary on your website can be more than a routine update—it’s an opportunity to reinforce your brand and foster engagement.

Visual Accents and Banners
Consider adding a prominent visual element to your site, such as a header banner or pop-up that acknowledges your milestone. This needn’t be limited to a simple line of text. Incorporate a striking graphic or visual motif that subtly—but clearly—signals your anniversary on every page. Linking this banner to a retrospective page or special blog post gives visitors an immediate way to learn more about your journey.

Dedicated Anniversary Content
Diving deeper, you might create a featured article or blog post that not only looks back at your organization’s growth and evolution, but also addresses how your industry or community has changed during your years in business. If you’re feeling ambitious, pair this with an interview series or short videos featuring founders, long-standing employees, or even dedicated customers. These stories can add texture and warmth to the anniversary narrative, while also offering insight into your organization’s vision for the future.

Highlighting Milestones and Timelines
For organizations celebrating a significant milestone, such as a quarter- or half-century, an interactive timeline on your “About Us” page can offer a compelling look back. Visitors can see at a glance how your story has unfolded over the years, with key achievements, photographs, or even press clippings. This not only spotlights your longevity, it can underscore your adaptability, commitment, and evolving expertise.

Updating Social Media and Company Bios
Don’t overlook your digital outposts. Briefly referencing your anniversary in your company bios and about sections on platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook can help amplify the reach of your celebration. This creates alignment across your digital presence and signals to both new and returning visitors that your milestone is part of your broader organizational story.

4) Frame Your Business Anniversary Celebration Messaging

This broader perspective can also inform your messaging efforts surrounding the celebration. A recent article in Forbes makes the point that the “why” of your celebration can be critical. Why exactly should anyone care about the fact that your organization or company has been around for x number of years?

The article goes on to suggest some possible ways of providing that “why”, including podcasts with interviews with current and former employees, special newsletters with anniversary-related stories, etc. But the broader, more significant point here is that this kind of content can do more than serve the short-term goal of raising awareness of your anniversary observance. It can also have a permanent place (and function) in marketing your organization as, for instance, additional content for your website or landing pages.

5) Involve Employees in Spreading the Word

Your staff can be some of your celebration’s most compelling advocates—and communication channels. As you consider strategies to share your anniversary with customers, partners, and the broader community, don’t overlook how employees’ everyday communications can amplify your message in authentic and effective ways.

A simple yet powerful place to start is the humble email signature. Encourage everyone in your organization to add a discreet but celebratory line mentioning the anniversary—such as “Proudly serving our community for 25 years.” This small addition to routine correspondence gently keeps your milestone top-of-mind for anyone receiving emails, from clients to vendors.

Similarly, consider reviewing other touchpoints where employees interact directly with your audience. For organizations with customer-facing staff, even temporary updates such as buttons or commemorative pins worn on uniforms can spark curiosity and conversations. This is an approach that works whether your people are in retail, hospitality, public service, or the trades.

For those with phone systems, on-hold and after-hours messages represent rare opportunities: a truly captive audience. Refresh your scripts to mention the anniversary, or infuse a bit of historical perspective or humor—think, “Celebrating a century of service, back when a ‘stream’ was just a body of water.” These small touches not only reinforce your brand but also offer moments of surprise and delight.

By weaving your milestone into daily communications and touchpoints, you extend the reach and resonance of your anniversary far beyond the main event. Each interaction becomes a subtle reminder of your legacy and the people who made it possible.

6) Consider Creating an Anniversary Logo

A business anniversary celebration should go beyond simply recognizing your organization’s continued existence. At its core, it is also a way of showcasing,  and furthering, your brand itself.

A logo is one of the most visible symbols of your brand.

You may therefore want to solidify your messaging efforts by creating a special anniversary logo. Here again, a commemorative logo of this sort can provide marketing and promotional benefits long after your celebration event itself.

7) Tap (or Begin Curating) a Company Archive

Another preliminary business anniversary strategy involves amassing archival material. An organizational archive might draw on a variety of materials, including memorabilia, interviews, and other artifacts of the organization’s development and growth. For younger organizations, a historical archive might consist primarily of recollections of a company’s start-up and launch phases.

Historical material of this sort, whatever its form or vintage, can significantly enliven an anniversary observance. It can also provide invaluable source material for future observances as well as more immediate marketing and promotional campaigns.

8) Highlight Your Milestone on Your “About Us” Page

Another practical way to amplify your anniversary is by revisiting your company’s “About Us” or history page. This section is often the first stop for those wanting to understand your organization’s journey, values, and achievements. Use the occasion to weave in the story of your milestone year. Consider building out this page with a dedicated segment or timeline marking key moments, notable achievements, and the evolution of your company.

Interactive timelines can be particularly effective for significant anniversaries—think quarter-century marks or beyond—allowing visitors to explore major developments across the decades. Supplement the story with photos, archived marketing materials, testimonials, or even a video montage. Not only does this provide richer context for your visitors, but it also demonstrates both heritage and forward-looking momentum.

9) Integrate Business Anniversary Awards & Gifts

There is a final suggestion that can both complement and unite the remaining strategies above. This is also a strategy aimed at not only heightening immediate interest in your event but also ensuring that it is remembered.

The gallery above showcases a selection of custom anniversary and milestone commemoratives. They reflect a diverse cross-section of organizations and companies.

Custom gifts and awards can provide this kind of visible, tangible, and most important—lasting— reminder of your event. They can be tailored for your organization: your logo, mission, service, product, or anything that uniquely captures your brand. These awards and commemoratives can be displayed for years to come throughout your organization, in reception areas, conference rooms, and individual employee offices.

At The Corporate Presence, we’ve been helping companies and organizations in a variety of sectors and industries celebrate milestone anniversaries and achievements for over 40 years. See how we can extend the celebration (and impact) of your business anniversary with truly memorable custom commemoratives. Get the design process started now.

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy for The Corporate Presence, and for Prestige Custom Awards, a designer and provider of custom corporate awards ranging from creative employee and client recognition pieces to the N.F.L. Commissioner’s Awards, and ESPN’s ESPY awards.

Here are a couple of creative sparks for distinctive tombstone award designs

Tombstone awards tend to have their own built-in cachet and perceived value. Even the most conventional tombstones have tremendous significance for recipients—for the simple reason that they embody all the time and effort devoted to closing a transaction.

And if you need independent confirmation of the impact of tombstone awards, you should check out Kevin Roose’s book Young Money.

Roose’s account of the trials of a group of first-year investment banking analysts contains a small but particularly telling personal detail. One banker describes his regular ritual, as he prepares to catch some sleep between grueling stretches of work. At these moments, what he takes pride in—and by his own account, what makes him smile is looking at the row of deal toys arranged on his desk.

That said, there are still ways you can increase the resonance of tombstone awards. And yes, you’re probably aware of the advice inevitably offered up at this point: base the design on your client’s logo.

That’s great advice, but again, you or someone on your deal team, probably already thought of that. And there’s also a good chance your client has already received tombstones with similar designs.

Make no mistake: there are any number of potential designs that play off a logo, brand mascot, etc. We create designs like this all the time, so it would be hypocrtical to say otherwise.

But what if you want a tombstone award that gets closer to the shared experience of the deal itself?

We’ve outlined here a couple of potential creative sparks for non-obvious and distinctive tombstone award designs.

1) Include an (Even Small) Extra Element in the Design

Even a relatively small, relatively subtle touch can tie a tombstone award more closely with the underlying deal.

The Lucite wedge design shown below provides a good example.

The wedge shape is a popular alternative to a rectangle, Even so, the wedge style is ordinarily considered a relatively basic or standard shape. Even so, the addition of some simple, custom elements elevates this piece well above a “basic” design.

The tombstone features a northern lights motif. It plays off the geographic focus of the joint ventue deal being celebrated: Canada’s Northern Territories.

Again, there’s nothing showy or ostentatious about this piece. But despite its simple trappings, it incorporates several elements that result in unique value to its recipients.

2) Base Your Tombstone Award on a Code Name

We’ve pushed the idea of code-name-inspired deal toys for a number of years. Code names can run the gamut in terms of the creative options they seemingly provide. Some, like Project Goldfish for Macquarie, and Project Valkyrie, which provided the inspiration for the Viking-themed tombstone shown at the top of this post, are highly evocative.

But there are other code names that don’t seem to offer the same kind of rich creative possibilities. You should keep in mind, though, that even if a code-based design seems a little more commonplace or even cryptic, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Once again, you are after all looking to memorialize—and celebrate—the shared experience of bringing the deal to fruition.  A design that plays off this kind of insider experience and knowledge might actually have great resonance among recipients.

The gallery below showcases a selection of project-themed designs.

3) Showcase Pieces in Custom Boxes

Custom boxes can significantly increase (and extend) the impact and perceived value of a gift or award. They can also magnify the branding impact of the piece. Finally, gift boxes of this sort offer an ideal way to deliver a personalized note of appreciation or thanks to each recipient.

4) Add Personalizations to Individual Pieces

Personalizations can be added to individual pieces in one of two ways. Each individual piece can personalized for an individual recipient, or pieces can list a group of individuals. Either effect can, again, substantially heighten the perceved value of the piece.

5) What Made the Dealmaking Process Memorable?

Is there anything that comes to mind as a defining aspect of the dealmaking process?

This is a source of ideas that, again, tend to resonate most with the actual deal participants.

In the case of a tombstone we once designed for Blackstone (see below), the salient aspect of the deal was the amount of time it took to finalize. That was reflected in the turtle (the cane and bifocals, on the other hand, are a nod to the underlying subject of the deal: nursing homes).

Here again, it’s the inside nature of this kind of design element that makes this deal toy so effective.

6) What Made the Deal Itself Memorable?

Just as tombstone awards designs can play off distinctive elements of the dealmaking process, they can also spring from the deal itself.

These can be headline aspects of the deal. Over the years, we’ve based designs on deals that were, for instance, barrier, record, or ground-breaking. Or they’ve highlighted a given deal being the first or largest type of transaction.

But the distinctive aspect of the deal doesn’t have to be that dramatic.

The deal toy below, for example, highlights sustainability as the foremost theme of the transaction. And it does this through the very choice of materials.

For this tombstone award, celebrating a capital raise by New Zealand-based CarbonScape, a very conscious decision was made to use wood.

The selection was especially appropriate since the company has patented a more sustainable alternative to lithium-ion for use in batteries. That process produces bio-graphite—which, in turn, is derived from wood chips.

7) Focus on the Parties

Looking to the parties for tombstone design ideas may not seem especially inspired, or new.

After all, logos are a common source of designs; and logos combining, or intertwining the logos of two or more parties often come to mind as potential ideas as well.

You can base designs on the locations of subject company, or of the parties themselves. Or, for instance, you could call attention to the different time zones separating various parties. You may have seen tombstone designs like these incorporating clocks, but there are a number of creative ways to work in this concept—as with design idea.

Your Tombstone Award & The Corporate Presence

By their very nature, tombstone awards can have pretty profound meaning for recipients.

And this should highlight a significant point about tombstone awards and deal toys. Their significance isn’t necessarily a function of the size of the transaction or the prestige of the parties. Even a relatively small deal can nevertheless have tremendous value to the participants.

But as the tips provided here show, you don’t have to go very far afield to enhance that value. Relatively minor—and sometimes relatively inexpensive—tweaks to a design can have disproportionate effects.

At The Corporate Presence, we’ve been designing these kinds of tombstone awards for over 40 years. We can provide you with design options that not only have impact, but also fit your timetable and budget. Get the design process started.

Whether you’re envisioning a striking crystal piece, an elegant acrylic, a classic plaque, or a custom creation that captures the essence of your transaction or partnership, we’re equipped to help. Our extensive experience covers custom awards for branding, employee recognition, and honoring key business partners—ranging from creative, one-of-a-kind designs to prestigious pieces for organizations like the NFL and ESPN.

No matter the size or significance of your deal, we offer a wide selection of award materials and styles to match your vision and celebrate your achievement in a meaningful way.

Reach out to us today.

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy for The Corporate Presence, and for Prestige Custom Awards, a designer and provider of custom corporate awards ranging from creative employee and client recognition pieces to the N.F.L. Commissioner’s Awards, and ESPN’s ESPY awards.

Code names offer a rich, and too often neglected, source of deal toy ideas.

Why do code names inspire so many memorable and successful deal toys?

Code names tend to provide ready-made design ideas because they also tend to be both colorful and evocative.

The code names for high-profile deals have included, for instance, Bambi, Maui, Comet, Bald Eagle, Napoleon, Pineapple, and Quantum. At The Corporate Presence, we’ve created successful tombstone designs based on code names as seemingly random and far-flung as Big Bang, Goldfish, Eastwood, Beachfront, Matchbox, Macchiato, Mariner, Camouflage (shown here above and below)—among many, many others.

We’ve written before about the design potential offered by project names. Code names have resulted in some of the most memorable and effective deal toy designs, for both bankers and, importantly, clients. And as we mentioned in our post on creative deal toy ideas they’re most often completely ignored.

It may help you appreciate that range of creative possibilities by seeing some actual examples. We’ve featured directly below two views of a crystal design commemorating Project “Martini”.

We’ve presented additional examples in the gallery below, along with some some background on why code names evolved in the first place.

Code Names, Secrecy, and Deal Toys

The obvious rationale for a code name is the confidential nature of certain aspects of a transaction. Maintaining confidentiality can be of critical importance, especially with mergers and acquisitions. Leaks and rumors concerning parties, terms, and timing, can have serious repercussions in financial markets. Disclosure of sensitive information can also benefit rivals, and hurt a party’s competitive position.

But code names can also inject a small element of fun in what can otherwise be a prolonged, and often grueling dealmaking process.  Former Merrill Lynch M&A banker Scott Rostan may have brought the proper perspective to the importance of coming up with a winning code name.

“A good deal code name”, he once explained to The Wall Street Journal, “can make you a rock star”.

“At least for a few minutes”.

The Bond of Secrecy and Its Importance to Deal Toys

The glory of striking upon a memorable code name might be temporary. But the code name itself can live on in a deal toy design for literally decades.

Though many people tend to disregard deal toys as frivolous and even worthless, they have considerable meaning for deal participants. Even the most antic tombstone design can for them symbolize something extremely important and valuable.

What gives deal toys their value and cachet among recipients is their customized nature. They’re not interchangeable. They’re not merely mass-produced, lookalike designs wrenched off some factory shelf and used to celebrate whatever transaction is at hand.

Their designs tend to reflect something unique to the deal or the participants. That unique design element can spring from a number of sources, including a logo (or logos), a industry or sector, or the type of deal.

It might also spring from an experience or bond unique to the deal participants. Significantly, a code name, known only within a select circle of dealmakers, might provide the quintessential example of that kind of “insider” experience and knowledge.

It’s therefore not surprising that, among both bankers and their clients, deal toy designs based on code names have such perceived value, meaning, and resonance.

And recipients tend to hold on to deal toys for years (and even decades—as we’ve learned through requests to replace lost or broken pieces over our 40+ years in business). That code name and the resulting deal toy could retain its meaning for a considerable time.

Small Deals Shouldn’t be Excluded

Yes, the code name associated with megadeals tend to be the ones most widely recognized and celebrated. But that doesn’t mean they’re the only transactions for which a code name design might be appropriate.

The $23 billion dollar Berkshire Hathaway-Heinz deal, for instance, boasted not just one but multiple code names. (They included “Hawk”, “Penguin”, “Goose”, and “Owl”).

But again, the key to the perceived value (and enduring appeal) of deal toys isn’t necessarily the monetary value of the underlying transactions they commemorate. What’s crucial isn’t the size of the deal, but it’s importance to the participants.

Code name designs can work for smaller transactions—with appropriately smaller deal toy budgets. You’ll notice that some of the designs in the gallery above feature relatively modest and inexpensive tweaks to incorporate the project name. In the case of the Exterran-MidCon deal, for instance, “Project Mercury” appears via the simple addition of a watermark to the deal terms.

Project Name-Themed Designs

The code name also doesn’t have to be part of a traditional merger or acquisition. Increasingly, clients request “deal toys” to commemorate achievements and milestones outside the investment banking arena. There are any number of business developments (including, for instance, joint ventures, strategic alliances, new product launches etc.) that might have taken on project or code names in the same concern for privacy. These too can be successfully memorialized and celebrated through some confidential identifying name.

Exploring Code Name-Inspired Deal Toys

At The Corporate Presence, we’ve found inspiration in a variety of aspects of deals, many of which weren’t immediately apparent to either our banking clients or their clients. Whether the appropriate design idea for your deal proves to be a code name—or any number of other potential possibilities—our team is dedicated to providing you with the best possible tombstone.

You may not achieve rock stardom, but you will have a deal toy that provides a memorable and distinctive memento of your deal. Reach out to us today.

Settling on an appropriate budget for commemorating a financial transaction isn’t always so straightforward. Budgets for finance awards or tombstones are typically a function of the size of the deal. For the most part, the larger the deal, the larger the budget.

But there are other factors that might complicate this formula.

The importance of transaction awards also tends to closely track the importance of the deal to the participants. And this isn’t always just strictly a function of the deal size. The deal might, for example, celebrate a firm’s first transaction in a given economic sector, or in a geographic region. Or it might be the kind of transaction that sets it apart for participants (and, therefore, potential recipients of the tombstones.)

But What’s an Appropriate Budget for Your Awards?

So why is all this important to a discussion of ways to save money on financial tombstones?

Because how you approach or modify your tombstone budget should take these factors into account. A finance award celebrating, for example, a firm’s first foray into life sciences could be great for recognizing internal participants.

But the deal’s significance in that regard also makes that commemorative a highly effective marketing tool for the firm (or group) as well going forward.

This potential return on an award should be kept in mind as you consider if, and where, budgets might be trimmed on a specific deal. That said, you’ll still always want to spend money wisely, as well as strategically.

This post will offer some ideas on saving money on tombstones—on a general basis. As you review the tips below, keep in mind the goal of not only saving money, but also getting the most out of the overall spend on your specific transaction.

5 Money-Saving Tips for Finance Awards

1) Consider Aggregating Transactions

There are several recurring situations in which budget concerns can become especially daunting. One is when a firm (or group) is considering starting (or resuming) a tombstone award program. One common hurdle is that there’s a backlog of accumulated deals, or there are a number of relatively small deals in that backlog.

One solution is to combine deals in a single design.

As shown below, this format can not only combine deals in a single piece, it can also bring focus and coherence to a deal backlog. You might combine in a single design, for instance, deals from the same year, or the same region.

The marketing impact of graveyard pieces like this can be considerable. They can also be used to showcase transactions done on behalf of a certain client, or in an area/sector in which your firm is looking to establish (or showcase) its experience and expertise.

2) Choose Appropriate Materials

If you’re trying to stay within a well-defined budget, certain award materials aren’t likely to be a good choice. Almost all awards and tombstones involve some degree of set-up (fixed) costs. But for certain materials, namely pewter and resin, those set-up costs can be especially steep.

Both pewter and resin undoubtedly have their virtues, but they should be avoided if your budget is tight. Consider materials such as crystal or Lucite instead.

3) Keep Designs Simple (Though Not Necessarily Boring)

It may seem almost self-evident that simpler designs tend to be less expensive. (The only additional consideration here is size: larger pieces tend to be more expensive than smaller ones.)

But that doesn’t mean your simpler, “standard” design has to look meager or lackluster.

The gallery shown below, for instance, includes just a few essentially “basic” shapes. For other examples of standard-shaped designs with some cachet, check out our post on variations of basic designs, especially for some more expensive possible alternatives.

4) Consider a Signature Finance Award Design

If you have a slightly longer time horizon in mind in terms of cutting costs, you may want to consider a signature award or tombstone design. A standard, recurring design like this can have several advantages for your firm or group.

First, a signature award can save you money–particularly in the form of reduced set-up costs on future projects. Secondly, the design’s recognizability can have considerable marketing value (especially if that design plays off, or incorporates, a logo or some other aspect of your firm’s branding.)

Finally, a signature award can save you considerable time, a commodity that should always be taken into account when calculating “costs”.

5) Recognize Incremental Costs (and Value)

As noted above, even a small order can incur some set-up costs. So if you’re going to incur those costs, be sure you’re minimizing them. Obviously, even with a small quantity, each additional piece further amortizes those set-up costs (and reduces the price per piece). Therefore, if you expect to need extra pieces at some future time, for instance, to display in a conference room, reception area, or other offices, you should add those to your initial order.

Why not just order those additonal pieces sometime in the future as needed? You could. The only drawback is that the award firms tend to have different set-up policies. Most firms will keep your artwork in their system for years, but after a certain period after your order, you may be required to incur some set-up costs again. Make sure you’re aware of your options here early on.

Save Money on Finance Awards at The Corporate Presence

Over the course of 40+ year The Corporate Presence has accumulated a good deal of insight into how clients can contain costs on awards. In fact, over the years we’ve devoted a number of posts over the years to specific tops such as saving money on rush orders, and reducing costs (and anxiety) for those orders involving closing dinners and other deadlines.

See how we can help you implement some of the cost-cutting strategies above, as well as some others not mentioned here. Get the ordering process started. Reach out to us today.

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy for The Corporate Presence, and for Prestige Custom Awards, a designer and provider of custom awards, ranging from creative employee and client recognition pieces to the N.F.L. Commissioner’s Awards, and ESPN’s ESPY awards.

If may be new to deal tombstones or, as they’re also more commonly known, “deal toys“. To the extent you do know them, they might seem like a waste of time, money, and effort. The word “toy”, after all, usually tends to denote something that, however amusing, is still basically pretty frivolous and insubstantial.

Deal tombstones Have Several Significant Functions

One is to recognize and reward the efforts of those employees, usually at an investment bank, who put together a transaction.

The other, even more significant rationale involves the bank’s clients. Unlike the countless, interchangeable pens, letter openers, and clocks that banks once gave clients as celebratory gifts following a transaction, deal toys are distinctive, bespoke items—ones that tend to have considerable value and cachet with the clients receiving them.

That cachet leads them not only to keep but proudly display them for years to come.

And that’s precisely where the marketing value comes in.

For almost 60 years now, banks have appreciated the impact of deal tombstones. Whether they’re made of Lucite, crystal, wood, etc., or displayed in a reception area, conference room, or office, they succeeded in silently keeping that bank’s name (and brand) in front of the clients for years—even decades.

Amplifying Your Deal Tombstone’s Marketing Value

So deal tombstones have marketing value—and something that’s been proven over a number of decades. But what about special situations in which you may want to enhance that value and impact? There are a number of reasons for this.

You may be looking to celebrate a landmark transaction of some sort. Or the transaction might involve a new, or particularly prized client. Or the deal might mark the first foray of your bank (or group or office) into a particular sector, type of transaction, or geographic region.

Obviously, a memorably creative tombstone offers one route to increased impact on a client. (And rest assured: a memorable piece doesn’t necessarily involve a flamboyant design or a huge budget). But are there other, additional ways of heightening a deal toy’s impact?

We’ve outlined a few ideas below.

1) Custom Packaging

Custom presentation boxes provide a cost-effective way of increasing the perceived value of a deal toy. They also provide another way of showcasing your logo (especially effective when coupled with that of your client).

2) Multi-Transaction Pieces

A “graveyard” design is an assemblage of “tombstones”, each representing a separate transaction, in a single piece.

These are a cost-effective way to commemorate a number of deals at once (which makes them an ideal solution if you have a backlog of deals you need to commemorate.)

These designs also offer a number of marketing possibilities. You might, for instance, want to provide a client with a piece commemorating not only one transaction but a number of transactions you’ve performed on their behalf.

Or you could use a multiple-transaction design to serve a more general marketing goal.  Displayed in a reception area or conference room could, for example, show transactions involving a variety of clients that highlight your expertise and experience in m&a, Latin America, or the tech sector.

3) Modular Deal Tombstone Designs

Modular designs commemorate a series of related transactions for a given client over a period of time. They can be a very compelling, tangible expression of your sustained commitment (and dedication) to that client over time. One example is the puzzle piece shown at the top of this post. Another is the modular design shown above, in which successive deals are slotted into a base.

4) Signature Designs

One ongoing strategy for elevating the impact of your deal toys involves a signature design. A recognizable signature tombstone design is yet another way to maintain visibility and further advance your brand with clients.

5) Deal Tombstones Incorporating Custom Touches

One surefire way of ensuring that both a deal toy—and your brand—continue to resonate with a client involves customization. More specifically, it involves an element of customization particularly significant to your client.

That might mean, for instance, a tombstone with a Lucite embedment of your client’s actual product. Or the design could be based on a 3-D facsimile of that product. Or it could creatively play off the client’s brand mascot or logo.

The key here is to incorporate something that has meaning unique to the recipient.

Maximizing the Marketing Impact of Your Tombstone

To fully appreciate the marketing value of a deal tombstone, you have to approach it from several levels. Yes, deal toys have a demonstrated ability to advance an institution’s brand, such as that of an investment bank. That also holds, as mentioned before, on a secondary level. They can further the brand (and reputation) of a group of offices within that bank.

But even beyond that, deal toys serve another, more subtle marketing goal. Importantly, they can also help advance your personal brand. They provide tangible evidence of your own expertise and experience, ones that you will probably want to take with you as you change jobs (or simply move to successive jobs at the same firm.)

At The Corporate Presence, we’ve been creating and enhancing the value of deal toys for clients for over 40 years. Whatever the size or type of transaction you’d like to commemorate, we can make sure your deal toy recognizes its full marketing potential. Reach out to us and get your project started.

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy for The Corporate Presence, and for Prestige Custom Awards, a designer and provider of custom corporate awards ranging from creative employee and client recognition pieces to the N.F.L. Commissioner’s Awards, and ESPN’s ESPY awards.

Investment banking deal toys seldom reflect the complexity of their underlying transactions. Take, for instance, the deal toy commemorating Dell’s landmark acquisition of EMC. The $67 billion transaction, the largest tech deal in history at the time, required almost a year of intricate financial, legal, and regulatory maneuverings before its final close in September of 2016.

The tombstone, by contrast, was a model of forthright simplicity: a basic (though effective) Lucite rectangle design.

But this post will focus on a different kind of complexity.

The Challenges of Commemorating Complex Investment Banking Deals

This post will consider instead the challenges of commemorating transactions in which one or more elements of the deal seem daunting or unmanageable.

There are any number of reasons for this, including:

• The “deal” being recognized actually encompasses, or necessarily involves, multiple related deals.
• The transaction involves a large number of assets.
• The assets involved are diverse and far-flung.
• There are a large number of parties to the transaction.
• Those parties (or assets) represent a number of geographic areas.

And there might be both practicalities and sensitivities that make these kinds of considerations significant—even potentially hazardous. The issue for you might be representing in the design all parties, and on relatively equal terms. Or in approaching a deal toy design, you might want to represent fully a client’s multiple lines of business–if only for fear of neglecting or slighting some individual or group.

At the same time, you don’t want these elements to come together haphazardly.

As always, your goal is a design that integrates (or harmonizes) these elements in a seamless, coherent, and creative way.

Below we’ll look at examples of design solutions in common situations in which some aspect of a deal might seem particularly awkward or unwieldy.

The Deals Involving Multiple Transactions

There are any number of logical or practical reasons for combining more than one transaction in a single tombstone design.

You’ve undoubtedly seen relatively conventional pieces that incorporate multiple deals. They might be similar to the Williams and Kongsberg designs shown below.

But you may not have seen multiple deals incorporated in a more elaborate, creative way. Also shown below are tombstones, such as the Williams and Kongsberg pieces, that combine the deals in a single, unifying creative design.

The Williams piece shown here, for instance, incorporates four separate transactions. Importantly, the planetary design ties together all four deals under the transaction code name: Project Big Bang.

Also, you may not be aware of just how many deals could potentially be combined in a single design. You may not need to recognize as many as six separate transactions (as in the Deutsche Bank deal toy below) but it should be reassuring to know that it can be done.

Modular Designs

You may also recognize now, or reasonably expect, that the transaction(s) you’re currently recognizing will be part of a series. Here again, you should be aware that there are any number of modular designs that allow for this possibility. You’ll find two examples in this gallery.

Deals Involving Numerous (or Varied) Assets

Certain sectors are particularly prone to deals with an array of assets. Real estate transactions, for instance, can frequently involve a portfolio of properties. In the consumer goods space as well, there can be a portfolio or products and/or brands that need to be represented in the deal tombstone.

Photographs (along with flags and maps) offer great ways to represent assets in various portfolios. The first two designs below efficiently show an array of assets: in one case Japanese commercial properties, and in the other, an entire beverage product line.

You may have a more challenging set of assets to work with. Or you may simply want to render them in a more involved, creative way.

The two other designs in this gallery provide great examples. The KKR signpost piece is especially effective since it not only represents the names of various theme park properties but also conveys their locations.

On a larger scale, you might look to the spinning hexagonal design below. Altogether, the six sides include the logos of 12 brand and product categories.

Deals Involving Numerous Parties

Initial public offerings are transactions most likely to involve an unusually large group of participating institutions. The Facebook IPO, for instance, famously involved not only the three lead investment banks but also 30 additional “correspondent” banks that needed to be represented in the deal toy.

And yes, there’s nothing stopping you from simply listing all the parties to a transaction on the written transaction terms or even adding a base to accommodate all of them. But you may be looking for a more elegant solution.

The piece below, for instance, marks the sale by a consortium of its stake in European telecom GTS. The design’s use of plexi tiles not only manages to feature seven of those private equity firms but also to give them considerable prominence and visibility.

The Transaction Requires a Back Story

Sometimes the complexity involved in designing a deal toy is self-imposed. In spite of the always-available path of least resistance, you may feel strongly about conveying the particulars of your deal—what truly made in distinctive to participants.

It’s almost a cliché that “every deal toy tells a story”. Technically, and to varying degrees, they all do. But your ambition might be to relate that narrative with a little more flair—and color.

Take, for example, the Blackstone piece below which commemorated a transaction involving senior living facilities. The bankers, however, wanted to capture a key aspect of this particular dealmaking process: its excruciatingly slow pace.

The eventual deal toy design managed to memorialize all these elements. Both the transaction assets and this particular quirk of the deal making process are represented by the cane, spectacles, and the turtle.

What’s Your Ultimate Role in The Design Process?

It’s important to recognize that the burden of finding solutions or workarounds in the situations outlined above shouldn’t fall to you. You may want to participate in the design process, but ultimately it’s your vendor’s job to provide you with options.

That’s a consideration that probably can’t be overstated.

As much as you might recognize potential pitfalls and challenges in approaching a deal toy, its design can’t become the focus of your life. You obviously have any number of competing demands on your time and mental energy.

That said, you should still be aware that whatever design issue you’re anticipating, it’s undoubtedly one that, at some other time, some other firm has finessed in commemorating some other transaction.

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy for The Corporate Presence, and for Prestige Custom Awards, a designer and provider of custom awards, ranging from creative employee and client recognition pieces to the N.F.L. Commissioner’s Awards, and ESPN’s ESPY awards.