Asia Tech Podcast http://www.ATP.show Asia Tech Research http://www.AsiaTechResearch.com It's strange to think that one of the most iconic, loved brands of our time, LEGO, valued by some at around $150 billion, was once a washed-up has-been. Not many people today know that 10 years ago, LEGO nearly went bankrupt with $300 million in losses. The LEGO case study is a remarkable brand turnaround, perhaps the biggest of our generation. This presentation looks at how LEGO engineered its brand from zero to hero by building the company around its main asset: FANS.

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Every Fan is Awesome
How Fans Saved the LEGO Brand

2. Build a Brand Worth Talking About
GRAHAMDBROWN

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Contents
1. Success story
2. Bankruptcy
3. Focus
4. Word of Mouth
5. Co-Creation

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…and we’ll use my
BRAND EXPERIENCE
flywheel to understand
the case study

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1. FOCUS
2. FANS
3. FRONTLINE
Build the
Experience
The HOW
Join the dots
Build platforms
Touchpoints
Real-world
analog events
Build relationships
Understand WHY
Identify core
influencers
Break down walls
that prevent
them from
engaging you
Build on your DNA
Find your brand truth
What will people miss
if you were not there?
HOW TO BUILD
A BRAND WORTH
TALKING ABOUT
1. Start here with
your BRAND
truth
2. Find the FANS
that care about
your brand
3. Give your
FANS tools to
join the dots

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1. The Success Story
The World’s Most Valuable Toy Brand

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Selling 1200 Bricks a second

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4 Billion LEGO figures shipped

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86 bricks for every person in the world

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Bear in mind
that 10 years
ago, LEGO was
only #5

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Not bad for a
privately owned
company!

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To answer this we
need to focus on what
LEGO means not what
LEGO is

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…driven by a
strong brand

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…but

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something you
might not know…

20. “Nobody at Lego is
measured on sales
because the most
important thing is that
kids and retailers return
for more in future”
- Jorgen Knudstorp,
CEO Lego

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surprised?
Here’s a brand with
several billion dollars in
sales… not driven by
sales

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well, LEGO’s success
is all about long
term customer
relationships

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…but it wasn’t
always that way

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2. Bankruptcy
The Dark Side of the LEGO Story

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$300 Million Loss
(FY 2003)
10 years ago, LEGO
was in a very dark
place indeed…

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LEGO was a
DINOSAUR, a has-­‐
been from another era

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“plastic bricks are out
of place in a digital
world”

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Coupled with an
obsessive focus on
product not people
LEGO became
obsessed with
design philosophy…
…made the mistake of
recruiting the best designers
rather than engineers who
loved interaction

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LEGO lost touch

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We’ll look at the 3
aspects of what
turned the brand
around

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So, what’s the
blueprint?

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1. FOCUS
2. FANS
3. FRONTLINE
Focus on
public opinion
and trends
HOW NOTTO
BUILD A BRAND
WORTH
TALKING
ABOUT
Focus on mass
market reach
Focus on
products,
engineers
and design
First, here’s how NOT
to do. Here’s where
LEGO went wrong

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3. Focus
How LEGO rediscovered PLAY

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LEG GODT
Danish for “play well”
This is LEGO’s
simple brand truth
that it forgot…

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Play = LEGO’s
Brand Truth

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1. FOCUS
2. FANS
3. FRONTLINE
Build the
Experience
The HOW
Join the dots
Build platforms
Touchpoints
Real-world
analog events
Build relationships
Understand WHY
Identify core
influencers
Break down walls
that prevent
them from
engaging you
Build on your DNA
Find your brand truth
What will people miss
if you were not there?
1. FOCUS
HOW TO BUILD
A BRAND WORTH
TALKING ABOUT
So, the new CEO had
to start here… focusing
on that brand truth
and removing the noise

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What a few insightful LEGO
execs understood was that even
in the digital era, people still
valued face-­‐to-­‐face interaction

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LEGO needed to
reconnect with these
FANS to rediscover
their truth…

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“I also tell customers that
they fulfill a vital role: They
are an avenue to the truth.
And in today’s world, a
CEO needs every
avenue to the truth
that he or she can find”
- CEO Jorgen Knudstorp

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Let’s look at WHY
they built their business
around FANS first…

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4. Word of Mouth
How LEGO made FANS their brand

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GRAHAMDBROWN.COM
2. FANS
3. FRONTLINE
Build the
Experience
The HOW
Join the dots
Build platforms
Touchpoints
Real-world
analog events
Build relationships
Understand WHY
Identify core
influencers
Break down walls
that prevent
them from
engaging you
Build on your DNA
Find your brand truth
What will people miss
if you were not there?
HOW TO BUILD
A BRAND WORTH
TALKING ABOUT
Step 2 in the brand
turnaround meant
reconnecting LEGO
with the FANS

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13 Million
(Unofficial LEGO
Youtube Videos)
And it’s working, with
this much word of mouth,
your marketing becomes
a lot more effective

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in the Connection
Economy, if people
aren’t sharing your
brand

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…you don’t exist
So, LEGO’s challenge is not
trying to reengineer the
LEGO story but engineering
tools to help FANS tell
theirs…

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5 million #LEGO photos on Instagram

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These “unofficial”
conversations
are the LEGO brand

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This is what gets
shared, what people
talk about and what
you can’t fake in an ad

51. http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=lego
Google Search Trends:
“Lego”

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LEGO understands that
the real heroes of the
brand

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…are the FANS

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…because every FAN
looks at your marketing
and asks, “where am I in
this story?”

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And storytelling is
whatever FANS say it is:
often simple but
devastatingly effective

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Now, let’s look at
HOW they built their
business around FANS

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5. Co-Creation
How LEGO turned FANS into Factories

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2. FANS
3. FRONTLINE
Build the
Experience
The HOW
Join the dots
Build platforms
Touchpoints
Real-world
analog events
Build relationships
Understand WHY
Identify core
influencers
Break down walls
that prevent
them from
engaging you
Build on your DNA
Find your brand truth
What will people miss
if you were not there?
HOW TO BUILD
A BRAND WORTH
TALKING ABOUT
1. FOCUS
The key here is how LEGO
built their experience around
the interaction of FANS:
platforms to share ideas and
events to connect

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It first starts with
breaking down the
walls…

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“we actively
encourage
our fans to
interact with us
and suggest
product ideas”

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…and building
platforms to house
the conversation

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This is LEGO IDEAS -­‐
their robust
crowdsourcing platform

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REBRICK is just of the
many sites showcasing
LEGO FAN work

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…accepting that
LEGO’s “department
of great ideas” doesn’t
exist inside the company

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“While we have 120 staff designers, we
potentially have probably 120,000
volunteer designers we can access
outside the company to help us
invent”
…and that starts with
letting go of the idea
that you have to have
all the answers

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…leveraging the idea
loyalty transfer of
existing FAN bases…

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Most popular project
submitted to LEGO Ideas -­‐
instant success plugging into
vocal FAN base of the
Minecraft community

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LEGO IDEAS helps the
brand tap into different
communities and give those
FANS tools to connect

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…no more guess work
So much traditional
marketing -­‐ from focus
groups to advertising -­‐
is just pure guess work

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Working with FANS
means making
the market
tell YOU what
it wants
But FANS de-­‐risk
the process for all

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Market research? Pre-­‐
launch marketing?
Brand partnerships? All
of the above…

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Working with FANS
means baking marketing
into the production
process

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When 10,000 people
support an idea, you
already have a market
ready for launch

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Working with FANS
means understanding
innovation is what
people do, but
connection is
why the do it…

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The key to LEGO
success is using online
to augment not replace
the offline experience

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At the end of the day,
what’s shared is the less
important than the
nature of sharing itself

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And LEGO plays a vital
role in helping FANS
join the dots…

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Working with FANS
means creating a
FRONTLINE and push
your people there…

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Working with FANS
means building a
CULTURE that allows
employees to think long
term and build
relationships

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“Nine out of ten times [customers]
may tell you something you know
or something you consider
vaguely relevant…”

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“…but if you dismiss those nine
times you never get the tenth time
where they tell you something
that’s really crucial, you were never
aware of. You’d only learn two,
three years later, and then of course
it’s too late”
- Jorgen
Knudstorp,
CEO LEGO

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1. FOCUS
2. FANS
3. FRONTLINE
Build the
Experience
The HOW
Join the dots
Build platforms
Touchpoints
Real-world
analog events
Build relationships
Understand WHY
Identify core
influencers
Break down walls
that prevent
them from
engaging you
Build on your DNA
Find your brand truth
What will people miss
if you were not there?
HOW TO BUILD
A BRAND WORTH
TALKING ABOUT
1. Start here with
your BRAND
truth
2. Find the FANS
that care about
your brand
3. Give your
FANS tools to
join the dots

84. Build a Brand Worth Talking About
GRAHAMDBROWN

85. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM
Share the love
don’t forget to
hit the LIKE button
so other Slideshare users
can discover this too

86. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM86
PDF FILE PDF & KEYNOTE FILE
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Choose the PDF or PDF + KEYNOTE option