Your guide to marketing at Web Summit 2024
Check out our step-by-step guide to all things marketing at Web Summit this November. Hoping to ge...
A mere 10 years ago, Lego – one of the world’s most recognisable
brands – was hurtling towards bankruptcy. In 2022, it was ranked
as the most valuable toy brand in the world.
How did a global behemoth change it up and bounce back? Investing in diversity was key to restoring Lego’s success. From product design to marketing strategy, and from hiring to community development, the core tenets became inclusion and representation.
Here are the five most important lessons to be learned from the
toy company’s glow-up:
Lego has made a commitment to ensuring that its toys and media content reflect the diversity of the world we live in.
In 2021, research from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media found that how toys are gendered impacts which toys children feel they should play with, stifling their choices. For example, 71 percent of boys feared being made fun of if they played with products labelled as girls’ toys.
As a result, Lego announced that it would no longer label its
products as ‘for boys’ or ‘for girls’. A browse of Lego’s website
shows that the gender category no longer exists.
Lego has used storytelling to create a world of diverse, relatable and inspiring characters, especially when it comes to improving gender balance and representation.
For example, the Lego Star Wars franchise has far more female characters than ever before. In 2005, there were only seven female mini-figures in this collection, but as of 2020 there were 56.
Lego also, at its heart, is about allowing fans to create their own
stories – something marketers can do no matter what the product,
as long as they tap into the consumer’s imagination.
“Six [Lego] bricks can make up to 950 million different combinations.
And, to a child, every combination will be something – an airplane,
a rocket, a ship, a duck…” noted Julia Goldin, global chief product
and marketing officer for the Lego Group.
“Kids have an enormous imagination,” Julia continued. “We’re
teaching them how to be creative, because creativity, arguably, is
the most important skill that we need to have in the future.”
Lego has managed to create products and characters that are
outside the traditional toy box.
One of the best examples of this innovative thinking is Lego’s
2020 launch of braille bricks, designed to help children with vision
impairment learn the braille alphabet while developing tactile skills.
“We also know that a lot of blind kids love building with Lego bricks
in general, so we created audio building instructions so they can
actually build the creations,” added Julia.
This outside-the-box thinking stretches beyond the physical Lego brick with the company’s entrance into the metaverse, which, Julia noted, hasn’t been designed with children in mind – something Lego wants to rectify.
“We partnered up with Epic Games because we want to create
an environment where kids can play immersively; where they
can be confident creators; where they can be engaging with big
communities and treated fairly,” added Julia.
Lego has invested in creating content and toys that represent
different groups, including women, people of colour, and the
LGBTQ community.
The most prominent example is the rainbow-coloured Everyone is Awesome set, which recently won Best Brand or Marketing Campaign at the 2022 British LGBT Awards.
Elsewhere, in its reboot of Lego Friends – a popular set in its
12th year – the toy company added a new character with limb
differences.
“I cannot tell you how many parents have written to me personally,
and got in touch with many people in our company, to thank us for
the fact that their children are starting to feel that they are really
included, and they have the same opportunities as everybody
else,” Julia reflected.
Lego has paid attention to consumers, taking the time to understand what they’re looking for from Lego products and content. In fact, the company has built an entire community around engaging with Lego fans.
Lego Con, which is going into its third year, features master
builders of all ages from the fan community. Lego Life magazine
also caters to aficionados of the plastic brick, and is the number
one children’s magazine globally.
“Building communities and engagement – this is really the key to
building brands today,” said Julia.
“It’s really about one-on-one relationships with your consumer. It’s
about understanding the passion that your fans have, and tapping
into that passion.”
Main image of Julia Goldin, global chief product
and marketing officer for the Lego Group, on stage at Web Summit 2022: Eóin Noonan/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)
Check out our step-by-step guide to all things marketing at Web Summit this November. Hoping to ge...
The word “community” is often thrown around in the marketing and...