Visual Marketing: 99 Proven Ways for Small Businesses to Market with Images and Design

60. Thinking Outside the Box: Using College Lingo on an Unconventional Item to Attract Cult Status and Build Business on a College Campus

Creating branding that actually attracts college students is always a challenge: they're busy and don't care about advertising. Rather than reading billboards, they're tweeting and hanging out on Facebook. They're fast-forwarding through commercials. They are immune to your efforts. So when Hirons & Company was approached by B-Town Pizza, based in Bloomington, Indiana, to revamp its branding with a look that would resonate with Indiana University college students, Drew Hammond knew he had a challenge. “The primary goal was to create a brand that spoke directly to the college students,” says Hammond of Hirons & Company. “We wanted the tone to be funny, interesting and authentic to their college experience.”

Why It Works

Visually, the brand is designed to feel like stencil art. Simple shapes like the star and brackets create an abstract form representing the pizza box. The logo uses just two colors (crimson and black) and a simple brushing technique to get the intended look. “The hardest part was not over-thinking it,” explained Hammond.

The pizza boxes, which are sure to litter more than a handful of college dorm rooms at Indiana University, is peppered with cheeky statements such as, “Your calculus book is the fourth leg of your sofa” that appeal ...