February 6, 2020
Ian's Pizza serves up tasteful pies and creative branding across all of their locations and menu items.
They've been a customer of ours for over a decade, and we've watched their business grow from a college-town favorite in Madison to a national brand, with locations in Milwaukee and Seattle. Their claim to fame in those early days was their creative pizza concepts, with the Mac and Cheese pizza staking a claim for the most inventive late-night snack that a college student could desire. With a location across the street from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of America's top college towns, Ian's had a captive and hungry audience to start building their success. Check out this video from the UW-Madison Alumni that highlights how Badgers have come to love Ian's Pizza, and how the power of nostalgia for a hot slice can bring back memories of late nights in college.
Ian's printed up some fun Valentine's Day holiday themed stickers that we wrote about a few years back, and since then they have continued to innovate in their pizza and in their branded marketing. The focus for this post is that Ian's is using our glossy custom paper labels with four different designs for their different Signature Salads. First there's the Wisco Salad. Then you see the Caesar Salad, the Southwest Salad, and lastly the Greek Salad. There's so much creative art across these four labels, with characterizations and colors that really help make these labels pop off the packaging. Ian's is using these labels for catering orders so that the Ian's Brand is well represented away from their storefront.
Our custom glossy paper labels are coated with a varnish finish that is cured with UV light to protect the inks and keep your designs looking great. We have custom sizes and shapes that perfectly compliment any packaging needs, and Ian's Pizza uses a classic circle custom shape for these salad labels.
What's great about Ian's Pizza is how they've approached growth and marketing. We wrote up a case study back in the day about how they started their business. The key to their early success was that their founder Ian Gurfield wanted to run a business that was built to last, and he used some of the same Open Book Management methods from ZingTrain that we use at StickerGiant to run our business. At the heart of Open Book Management is a commitment to creating a plan and sticking to it, and clearly Ian's Pizza is growing and thriving.
Here's a few more Ian's Pizza sticker marketing tips from that case study that still ring true today.
5 tips to letting customers endorse you
- Make your stickers fun, and make them free. People will be happy to spread them around.
- Speak in an authentic voice. Stickers should match the experience people have with your brand.
- Make it fun for employees. Happy staffers make great ambassadors.
- Change up your message, but keep branding consistent.
- Be nice to your neighbors: If stickering gets out of hand, clean it up. “When we cater events, the first thing we ask organizers is how they feel about stickers.”