How a very tangible culture means everything is awesome for LEGO
Jeremy Paul MA (MarComm's)
Highly experienced global media strategy leader specializing in luxury brands with ambition, especially in the fine wines and spirits categories.
You have to admire LEGO: the parent brand has successfully morphed from a (to be blunt) one-dimensional educational kids-construction brick producer, into a multi-faceted licensing ninja.
In this journey LEGO has learnt the power of its own brand equity and how to leverage this across to other brands which share its values, breaking into entirely new revenue opportunities like LEGO The Movie (grossing a cool $468m globally off a $50m production cost).
Better, LEGO have learnt how to weave these elements together to monetise each several times over: characters from LEGO The Movie being sold as collectables for LEGO Dimensions video game being just one example.
Let’s take LEGO Dimensions as an example: the toys-to-life video gaming category (buy figurines, place them on a pad then the character appears as a playable figure in a video game); LEGO Dimensions created characters appealing to both parents and kids and communicated with parents whilst they were with their kids: showing both generations the fun of kids playing Wyldstyle (from LEGO movie) whilst dad plays as Doc Brown (Back To The Future) was irresistible.
This joint 'parents with their kids' approach extended into paid media where, for example in UK, LEGO Dimensions’ targeted its few TRPs (television rating points) into early peak when parents would be watching with their kids, achieving a very low ratio of media spend vs market share.
But this success is just the outcome of something bigger: approaching product and communications differently feels so very LEGO. Sure, the LEGO parent brand has huge residual ‘glow’ amongst parents but LEGO don’t rest on that: LEGO feels fresh and exciting because it quickly moves to maximise new opportunities, from licensed Falling Water architecture models for adults, to video gaming to movies, even if it’s just supporting an artist covering the underside of a bridge with giant bricks.
This is the key to the power of the LEGO brand: two of their core values, 'innovation' and 'fun' are more than handy phrases, they're front and centre.
And that’s the real success of LEGO: how a US$7.1bn brand with 12.5k employees stays innovative and fun when so many others are stuck in habit and process.
It’s a great story, ‘awesome’, in fact.