:format()//media/100-years-Reading-marketing-centenary-RQ.png)
How do you celebrate 50, 100 or 150 years of institutional history without spending an entire year talking about yourself?
It's a familiar communications challenge in higher ed.
University of Reading has come up with a particularly tasty answer.
To mark its 100th anniversary, food security master’s student Maha Khan created the Reading 100 Chocolate Bar, made entirely from British ingredients…including cocoa grown at the University itself.
There’s chocolate involved, yes. But there’s also an inspiring idea here for higher education marketing teams planning their own major anniversaries.
Source: https://www.reading.ac.uk/news/2026/University-News/All-British-chocolate-bar-made-from-Reading-cocoa
Don’t just tell people you’re 100
Anniversaries naturally involve looking back.
There are archives to explore, alumni to celebrate, old photographs to rediscover and decades of achievements worth revisiting…
But there’s another question universities can ask: What does all that history and expertise allow us to do today?
University of Reading’s chocolate bar is a good example.
Rather than simply wrapping existing research in centenary branding, they wrapped it around… (you see where we’re going with this)... an occasion to use the anniversary as a reason to create something new.
And chocolate is considerably easier to get people curious about than a centenary press release.
The centenary isn't the story. The research is.
The cocoa came from the University's International Cocoa Quarantine Centre, a climate-controlled facility in Berkshire that holds more than 300 varieties of cocoa plant and handles 97% of the world's international movement of cocoa material.
It exists to prevent the spread of pests and diseases between cocoa-growing regions, and to give scientists access to genetic diversity they'd otherwise have no way to study.
Most people had never heard of it before this week.
So an unusual anniversary story leads very naturally into bigger subjects, and that's what makes this work.
People may be curious about the chocolate, but once you’ve captured them, there’s something much more substantial to show them.
Give people a story, not just an anniversary
University centenaries matter a lot to a universities and its community.
But for everyone else, you may need another hook.
A student making a chocolate bar from cocoa grown in Berkshire has one built in.
It’s a way to distinguish the idea of how to promote a centernay to a wider look across your university: what’s happening in your labs, research centres, studios, or classrooms?
What can give your anniversary a life beyond the anniversary campaign itself?
Perhaps you can recreate an old experiment or revisit an invention?
Maybe something from the archives could maybe be brought back into public view.
Or current research could be connected in an unexpected way with the institution’s past.
The best idea doesn’t always come from marketers… sometimes you have to trust your students!
Make one good story work harder
The chocolate bar also gives University of Reading several stories at once.
There’s the centenary, but there’s also cocoa research, food security, climate change, postgraduate study and the people doing the work.
It gives the University something tangible for photography, video, social media, events, and media coverage, too.
For digital teams, they can leverage that through their website.
Someone reading about Univeristy of Reading through a chocolate story should be able to move easily into the research behind it, meet the people involved, discover relevant courses and explore the wider centenary.
A strong PR story can bring people to your website, but good content architecture gives them somewhere useful to go next.
Use the anniversary to look forward too
Beyond the chocolate, there’s the story about what comes next.
How do we tackle climate change, resilient crops, and international research collaboration?
There are so many stories that can be told, and deserve the spotlight.
That’s worth remembering when planning any major institutional milestone.
Absolutely celebrate the buildings, breakthroughs, people and moments that got you here.
But look at what’s happening around your university right now too.
The thing that gets people talking about your first 100 years might just be the thing that shows them what you’re capable of in the next 100.
And if that thing happens to be edible, you’ve certainly got a head start...
Have some great anniversary celebrations to share with the wider higher ed community? Let us know on LinkedIn.