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5 ideas you should steal from Lego’s marketing

THE TURN AROUND

By: Konnor

Lego has turned its fortunes around.

From once being a misguided and out of date European brand, Lego is now the world’s biggest toy manufacturer.

Look around and you’ll see signs of success: tapping into fan bases with the Lego Harry Potter, a multi-milliongrossing Lego Movie and long tail variants like Lego Minecraft.

So what makes Lego so successful?

5 IDEAS LEGO USES IN THEIR PLAYBOOK

Here are 5 ideas Lego exploits from their own playbook:

1) CONTENT vs CONTEXT

By: Windell Oskay

It’s just a plastic brick.

It’s easily imitatable.

But then it’s not just a plastic brick is it?

Your Grandparents don’t buy the cheaper Chinese knock offs because they trust the Lego brand.

People don’t buy stuff, they buy what stuff does for them.

Look on social media from Youtube to Instagram and you’ll find countless homages to Lego builds.

This is the world of the Fan and the “what stuff does for them” is the social packaging of that plastic brick. Thesocial packaging is the stories we tell, the memories we make with those pieces of plastic. Even

Lego understands the power of Context – what stuff does for them. The Content – the plastic brick – ismeaningless. Soda brands have known this for generations. The Content is just fizzy water and sugar, all thesame.

But the difference between Pepsi and Coke, between Red Bull and all those knock-offs is the emotion.

In the modern attention economy, the fine line between marketing success and failure is the difference betweenbeing liked and being loved. If customers “like” your product, you might as well be invisible.

Don’t fall in love with your product, fall in love with what your product does for them.

2) FANS START AT THE TOP

By: raphaelstrada

Lego CEO Jorgen Vig embraces Fans.

Lego doesn’t see Fans as those clicks on the Facebook page but as core to their marketing and innovationstrategy.

Unlike many brands today, the buy-in for Fans (and social media) starts at the top. Lego has a clear businesscase for why Fans count.

The data stands up. When it comes to word of mouth and persuading peers to buy, fans aren’t 2 or 3 times moreinfluential than your average customer. Fans are up to 100 x more influential.

When the buy-in for Fans starts at the top, social media doesn’t become an adjunct to marketing strategy but acornerstone of their whole business. Social media is a promise, and delivering on that promise requires abusiness-wide effort.

Social media is a key driver in marketing and innovation.

Lego Ideas is a key platform for sourcing the next line of products. Rather than turn to an outsourced designagency, Lego lets its Fans steer the direction of innovation. As Vig said himself, they may have only 120 designersin-house, but they can leverage 120,000 designers out-house.

ReBrick helps connect Fans with each other. By allowing Lego Fans to share ideas and builds, the Legocommunity and all that Earned Media it generates, grows.

Lego understands that in cultivating its innovative and influential Fan base, it needs to go deeper not wider. Whenyou have a business obsessed by awareness and market share and new customers, resources are stretched.

There is never enough time to build relationships.

Where most brands today still aim to be everything to everybody Lego understands a change in customerappetite. Brands need to be something to somebody. Brands need to take risk, alienate a few people but delightmany more.

Reversing the trend at Lego requires leadership.

By focusing on going deeper, Lego can identify powerful, influential Fan beachheads. Each beachhead provides abase of ideas and influence from which to grow. Lego’s tie-up with Minecraft is a good example of this idea loyaltytransfer. Lego will gain new Fans and new ideas from tapping related passions.

If you don’t know who your Fans are, you have only customers.

3) MANAGE AT “EYE-LEVEL”

By: Bill Ward

CEO Vig talks about “managing at eye-level” and how this strategy underpins Lego’s success.

Brands always struggle with remaining relevant, especially as they grow. The more successful brands become,the bigger the bureaucracy, the less contact they have with customers.

When was the last time the marketing team spoke to a customer?

It’s a question that reveals some uncomfortable truths about marketing today.

Successful brands like Lego maintain a close contact with customers. I’m not talking about focus groups andonline market research but maintaining a Frontline.

Apple’s Store is a Frontline.Red Bull’s events are Frontlines.Monster Energy’s Army is a Frontline.

And Fan conventions like BrickCon are Frontlines.

Managing at Eye Level means getting out to where the conversations take place. Sure, there are conversations onsocial media but that’s the easy answer. To understand what these conversations mean you have to be out thereinteracting with customers.

Managers need to go to the shop floor. Not as easy as it sounds. Too many “I didn’t take an MBA to do customerservice” attitudes in the business today. Overcoming corporate ego starts at the top through the CEO setting anexample.

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, mans the call center phones when he’s at HQ. And Jorgen Vig can be seen chattingto Fans at Lego conventions.

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Great brands are built in the field, at the Frontline. Relevance isn’t a function of your marketing or innovationteam’s genius, but of the distance between you and the customer.

Toyota brought the term “Genchi Genbutsu” to the public philosophy. Outside of Japan, the term is sometimescalled “Get your boots on”. Genba means to “go and see”. Go and see how people drive their cars. Go and seehow the shop floor builds on a daily basis. Go and see how the machines work.

Only through getting out there can we build empathy with Fans and gain real insight into the Context of ourContent.

Get your boots on.

4) CURATE DON’T CONTROL

By: Kenny Louie

Old School Brand Management has a lot to answer for. We live in an era where brand managers want

“conversations” and “buzz” but they still operate from brand templates. The two are mutually exclusive.

You cannot take a brand like Lego and expect to impose a singular brand narrative across all the Fans. You haveHarry Potter fans, technical builders, young explorers, Minecraft Crafties and so on. There are a millionconversations, each retelling their own stories using Lego.

In the era of Brand Democracy, the monolithic brand narrative no longer applies.

The modern marketing landscape is one of many narratives. Brands are defined in the everyday conversationsbetween Fans, less so in the advertising messages seen in the media.

Brand happens.

There is a well worn military adage that says “no plan survives the enemy”

The same can be said of brands and customers.

When the bullets fly, when customers talk, old school templating falls apart.

And Lego accepts this.

Lego accepts its role as a custodian of the brand. Lego curates rather than controls their conversations. ReBrickaims to connect Fans to share ideas and builds. Lego doesn’t impress or force conversation topics or ideas onthese Fans. Just like your mobile phone company.

Curating not Controling the conversation. Nobody picks the phone up and listens to the mobile phone companytalk do they? In the same way, Lego accepts that Fans don’t talk about Lego, they talk about themselves. Legodoesn’t employ celebrities to broadcast the Lego story, they help Fans tell their own. And in the era of Curation,this is how it needs to be.

Every Fan looks at your marketing and asks “where am I in this story?”

It’s not who’s telling your story, but whose story you’re telling that counts.

5) DISCOVER YOUR HIGHER PURPOSE

By: Orin Zebest

It’s not just a plastic brick, it’s a tool for play and cognitive development.

Lego is a tool to help father and daughter spend time together, a tool for a teenager to explore his passions forscience, a tool for adults to create.

In a world where we are losing public space and the ability to engage in unstructured play, Lego helps redress thebalance. Such is the anomaly of this plastic brick that it’s the most popular toy in the world; a world of iPads,Playstations and mobile phones.

Lego’s Higher Purpose is one of storytelling.

That humble plastic brick is a blank slate to tell a story.

It’s easy to forget your Higher Purpose.

Lego helps Fans connect. Only getting out there into the market do Lego managers understand and empathizewith the needs of Fans and how to best connect them. By spending time at the Frontline, Lego can betterunderstand its Higher Purpose.

Kodak used to be about Sharing Moments. But by failing to spend time at the Frontline, Kodak lost contact withFans. Kodak failed to empathize. Kodak began focusing on Content not Context. Why would Kodak be developingfilm in an era when Fans were turning to Instagram and iPhone. If Kodak followed Lego’s playbook, Kodak couldbe in the mobile business now.

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