Marketing Term Project: Lego-themed Amusement Parks Called Legoland

1. Introduction:

Lego is known all over the world as one of the most successful toy manufacturing company that ensures its popularity with trust in their quality and strength of the product. Primarily, the brand manufactures the classic interlocking plastic bricks, however, they’ve diversified their range of products and have moved to the entertainment and experience industry as well. Various Lego-themed amusement parks called Legoland and movies and direct-to-video such as The Lego Movie, The Lego Batman Movie, and Lego Friends: Girlz for life.

The company was started by a carpenter, Ole Kirk Christiansen in 1932 in Billund, Denmark. He derived the name of the company from the Danish words “leg godt” which translates to Play well. Initially, Ole Kirk only made wooden toys but slowly shifted to another range inspired from the frameworks of a British toy known as “Kidd craft Self-Locking Building Bricks”. They launched their own version of wooden bricks that allowed kids to make elaborate structures that they had not imagined. However, the designs still lacked some structural integrity, and thus, after a devastating and massive fire at the warehouse, the company switched to making the patented standard Lego’s stud-and-tube configuration with plastic. The company has now become the world’s largest company (in terms of revenue) with this same design. It has also beaten Mattel, one of its biggest competitors and former rank one in the toy industry, in 2015 with sales up to US$ 2.1 billion. The company is currently headed by Niels B. Christiansen, the new CEO of 2017.

Social media has been a major aspect of Lego’s marketing strategy and has created a ginormous effect on its sales. Their aim has always been to drive sales but they don’t restrict themselves to that. Instead, creating value for a customer takes priority. Lars Silber Bauer Anderson, the Senior Global Director of Social Media and Video, in an interview, in fact, said that they try to engage people to build stronger relationships by providing them with more ideas to play using their product. In a conference, he also talks more about their strategy. He mentions, “We want to be always testing out whatever new creative tools that Instagram or the others are coming up with. We want to learn from it, we want to try it out, we want to play around with it like we were kids who just got new toys.” With their innovative ways to keep customers engaged such as Lego Ideas, which give users a platform to submit ideas for Lego items to be transformed into potential sets that are sold worldwide, have impacted their sales to a large extent. They aim to sell an experience every day and in return hope to sell a product every month.

Lego has a wide spread approach and is on almost every platform. The company started with YouTube first in 2005 where they would regularly share content on their models and create content related to it. There now exists 7 other pages of Lego on the platform that cater to various needs of its consumers with over 7 million followers. Lego also joined Facebook in 2005 and currently has 13,331,652 likes and 13,282,278 followers. On Twitter, Lego has 611k followers currently and has been on the platform since May 2011. Finally, Lego joined the youngest social media of the Big Four- Instagram in 2012 and has garnered over 4.4 million followers with 2776 posts of theirs. With this premise in mind, of the mammoth presence that Lego has built over social media, we will explore in more detail by tracking its activity and engagement and analyzing it, in this report.

2. Research methodology:

a. Duration of data collection:

The data regarding Lego has been collected over a period of 1 month ranging from 4th July 2019 to 4th Aug 2019.

b. Social media monitoring tool used:

The Social Media Monitoring tool that has been used for deriving all the data regarding our brand of choice has been Brand24.

c. Rationale behind choosing the brand:

Everyone has their own Lego story, everyone remembers their first set, they remember the first time something that they built of Lego bricks. There can be very few brands as such as Lego’s. Originated by a Danish toy manufacturer named Ole Kirk Christiansen – a small-town goods store owner – it has developed in to a colossal brand on the planet. Now Worthing around $7.57 billion, It has now become world’s most valuable toy brand by a mile. According to consultancy Brand Finance, its brand value is measured up of factors including business performance and the value of the brand if it were to be licensed.

But the case wasn’t the same always as back in 2012, LEGO didn’t really GET social media, and wasn’t using it to anywhere near its full potential. But gradually LEGO has really turned the tables around, and not just in a ‘get up to speed with everyone else’ way. It regularly goes far more than to make digital work for its brand. Its series of Lego movies, tie-ins thrust Lego ahead of the likes of Apple, Ferrari, and Sony to become the most significant and financially successful brand on the planet. And Lego has pulled this off with grasping and enticing content for children and adults alike. That’s some story. And it’s an even more fascinating story to tell. From the recent launch of Lego movie Lego Ninjago in the US, it’s worth noticing how Lego rework the guidelines of brand modernization to become the boulder it is today.

3. Social media presence:

3.1 Social Media Tools Used:

As already highlighted above, Lego has established a huge presence in social media.

Below are the three Social media platforms where the brand enjoys a commendable position:

1. Instagram – This is the platform where Lego is recognised the most in terms of likes, shares, comments, etc. Instagram is probably the most important tool that the brand has used for its publicity.
2. Facebook – This platform is a close second to the previous one in terms of the parameters mentioned above. However, Facebook is a social media tool that helps Lego to gain the maximum reach to its customers.
3. YouTube – Being a platform that deals with videos majorly, this tool has helped Lego gain attention of its customer base through several educative videos on building, testing, and structuring their models for toys.

3.2 Social Media History:

The senior global director at Lego Group, Lars Silber Bauer says “We want to be always testing out whatever new creative tools that Instagram or the others are coming up with,

We want to learn from it, we want to try it out, we want to play around with it like we were kids who just got new toys.”

Silber Bauer initiated the presence of Lego in all the social media platforms from the scratch. Back in early 2007, Lego didn’t even have any Facebook page and today it is represented in almost all social media channels. It reaches to about 50 million people monthly and the key channel for the group is YouTube with over 7.8 million subscribers.

Lego social media presence is as listed below:

Social Media

1. Fa Facebook
2. Ins Instagram
3. Twitter
4. YouTube

Jo Joined in

1. Dec-2007
2. J Jul-2012
3. May-2011
4. O Oct-05

3.3 Social Media Measurement:

Lego recorded a maximum reach of 28 million and an average social media reach of 4.6 million during the observed period. The large volume of mentions of the brand on social media is an evidence of the fact that the brand has a healthy performance on social media. A sudden spike in mentions was observed on 07 July due to the trending hashtag #LEGOFACTS.

Lego’s Social Media presence is dominated by Facebook and this fact is advocated by the above chart which shows that 90% of the most influential authors for Lego operate on Facebook. These authors in turn exert a massive influence on the customers who use Lego’s products and that is precisely the reason why Facebook is one of the most active Social Media Platform for Lego. The other social media platforms follow trail.

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The overall public responses and mentions are shown above along with the percentage increase in the last 30 days from (4th July – 4th August 2019). The report shows that Facebook and Instagram have got the highest responses in terms of social media. The detailed analysis is done below.

5 most popular mentions are shown above which are fetched from various social media and networking platforms to show the connectivity of LEGO with the fan-base.

3.4 Social Media Framework:

To analyze the brand’s social media communication strategy, we conducted a SWOT analysis. The following were our findings:

1. Strengths-

• a. Lego has a strong and loyal fan base that continuously interacts and engages with the brand.
• b. The number of followers on all the major social media sites is huge and they have a number of pages on the same platform catering to different needs.
• c. It collaborates with consumers to generate content (UGCs) via Lego Ideas that increases consumer connect
• d. The frequency of posts is pretty high which suggests an increased activity,
• e. They also work around themed posts based on current trends and pop culture.
• f. Collaboration with popular brands like they collaborated with Harley Davidson recently to make a Lego version of the bike. They also have collaborations with popular movie franchises such as Harry Potter.
• g. The content shared across all social media sites is consistent and creates a strong image of the brand.
• h. It is marketed as a means of expression. It doesn’t solely put their focus on kids, there are various posts where adults have been seen engaging and interacting with the brand and thus, appealing to all age groups.

2. Weakness-

• a. The brand hasn't focused a lot on twitter and still lacks the same robust engagement and activity that it has on other platforms
• b. The communication lacks any conversation about LEGOLAND and its other offline engagement products

3. Opportunities-

• a. Launch of toys-to-life that allows physical figurines or action figures to connect inside the game
• b. Use of more influencers such as artists to expand their popularity and fan base.
• c. The expansion of the target group can also be done. The current image of the brand stigmatizes and limits itself to a kid's brand. Lego can work on their products and also come up with an adult

4. Threats-

• a. Mattel is a close competitor and various other brands such as Funs Kool and remaining are catching up rapidly
• b. The signature make-up of a Lego is no longer a protected design and can be made and sold by anyone. It is difficult for Lego to fight that many lawsuits against such duplicates.

Consumer Solicited Content:

The number of influencers which affect customers have a minimum of 11k followers due to which their influence score lies in the range of 8-10. We observed that there were in all six brand influencers who seemed to have both positive as well as negative sentiment towards the brand. About 920 posts were posted by influencers with a score of 10 out of 10.

User Generated Content:

Users who had an influencer score below 8 were observed to have comparatively lesser influence. Number of posts by users: 6308Number of posts with positive sentiment: 4468. Number of posts with negative sentiment: 248

4. Brand Liking, Reach and Second-degree reach influence

Established in 1932, LEGO has been creating impact on countless generations since ages. LEGO created an obsession among the young generation and Social Media plays a pivotal role in marketing strategy. With the help of visual content the brand leverages engagement and build a steady online community.

LEGO on Facebook

The above metrics shows the total fan base and how much LEGO has gained as a fan aggregator in the last 30 days (4th July – 4th August 2019). It counts to around 36,500 and the organic fan growth in percentage is around 0.28% which shows a steady increase in brand following and admiration for a global brand like LEGO. The other social media handles have equally good response for LEGO.

The above is the time span (on Facebook) that signifies the time range of high engagement among the followers and fans of LEGO by the amount of posts that were made on Facebook.

LEGO on Instagram

LEGO has a got a follower base of 4.4 m in Instagram which is growing like an entropy as LEGO can connect to all age groups and having a count of 2700+ in posts. [image: ][image: ][image: ] The above report shows the average engagement of follwers of LEGO on Instagram along with likes and comments which truly resemble the organic reach of the brand among the mass.

The above are the popular Hashtags used on Instagram handle to create more engagement among the fan base of LEGO and percentage statistics are also given along with it.

LEGO on YouTube

From Social Blade reports it has been observed that LEGO has a grade A in terms of responses and views and has a subscriber rank of 690 which improved from 700+ in last one month. The video view rank of 84 has also improved from the 90+ figure in the last month.

A snapshot of YouTube statistics of LEGO has been mentioned below which shows how much active LEGO is in YouTube with an average view of 4 million per video with a daily rise in the number of subscribers with a subscriber base of around 7.7 million.

YouTube projections by Social Blade:

The below report shows the total and average monthly views of videos of LEGO in YouTube. Though the total view is always increasing but there are many spikes and creeks in the curve for monthly and average monthly views of videos of LEGO in YouTube.

Sentiment Analysis:

In 2015, Brand Finance named Lego the World’s most powerful brand due to its continuous success and rock-soli strategy for social media marketing. The strategy was quite successful but it also had to face various challenges like the age restriction on social media sites. Being a children’s toy, it had to redirect its strategy to keep older adults engaged. It has controlled its social media presence in a manner that has enhanced not just it’s presence but also sales and marketing. We will now look at the sentiment analysis conducted in this month-long study. We will analyse the responses or direct posts made on Lego. The sentiment analysis suggests that it is highly positive with 22 K (+21 K (+1433%)) responses and negative responses are reduced to just 3545 (+3379 (+2036%)) responses.

Average Reach = Average Reach / Average Likes = 4833333.3333/90000 = 53.7037

Click Through Rate = number of unique clicks / the number of times it was shown = (2.7 M/145 M) *100 = 1.862

The positive sentiment analysis could be because of various reasons such as the uniquely tailored content that is specifically made keeping in mind the target audiences and platforms. The relevant content that they put forward are in line with the current trends and pop culture. In fact, the content has grown self-promotional. The insights for the communication are driven by Big Data analysis. The insights are then identified and selected to create the content that now exists. Silber Bauer says, “the company is all about creating a culture of understanding the consumer, your brand’s DNA, and then empowering people to jump on great content or consumer engagement when they see it.”

5. Summary

LEGO is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by The Lego Group. It is the company’s flagship product, which consists of colourful interlocking plastic bricks, gears, figurines, and other parts. It has shown tremendous growth that can be attributed majorly to its social media strategy. Through this study, we found that Lego’s presence is widely distributed and is present on various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest. Instagram has the highest engagement rate. It was found that YouTube has the maximum subscribers with the content distributed over 8 channels and Facebook has the greatest number of likes.

LEGO as a brand has shown a great presence and visibility among fans and followers in various social media platforms since many years. The brand engages with the mass on social media through visual content. LEGO has got a fan base of 13.4 Million with an average gain of fans at 0.28% in the last month with a count of 36.5 k plus which has a steady rate of growth. Around 4.4 million people are following LEGO in Instagram and LEGO has around 2800 posts in Instagram with immensely popular hashtags like #lego, #legoland, #legofans, #legostagram, and many more that bind the brand with the fans. As per the Social Blade report LEGO has got 690th Subscriber rank in YouTube with 84th in Video rank with a view of around 1 Billion in videos posted by LEGO in YouTube. LEGO is performing extremely good and steadily in other platforms like Pinterest.