RE: What makes a brand work?

While reading Erin's post, particularly the part about how successful brands are effective at persuasion via connecting with and identifying with their audience, I immediately thought of the branding for a start-up company I read about earlier this week called Push for Pizza.

Push for Pizza is an app that allows users to order pizza almost instantly without having to call a pizza place or even log in online. A user simply opens the app, builds a pizza, hits the button, sees options for pizza shops, then completes the order. The pizza is delivered to their location. This app is clearly targeting millennials and generation Z--the hyper-connected, smartphone-attached generations that prefer to communicate electronically with as little effort as possible. In fact, the company was started by college students.

Perhaps because the company was created and is run by the very generation it is trying to reach most, Push for Pizza's branding is spot-on in knowing with and connecting with its audience. A frequent tagline used is "Pizza is Bae." Bae is an acronym of endearment (meaning Before Anyone Else) that emerged just a few years ago and is used almost exclusively by 13- to 24-year-olds.

Push for Pizza uses similar lingo in its social media along with the type of humorous, hyperbolic imagery popular among millennials and gen Z, complete with hashtags and emojis.

For more examples, see Push for Pizza on Instagram.