Every Fan is Awesome: How Fans Saved the LEGO Brand

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.

Published in: Marketing, Business

Every Fan is Awesome: How Fans Saved the LEGO Brand from Graham Brown

Transcript

1. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM Every Fan is Awesome How Fans Saved the LEGO Brand
2. Build a Brand Worth Talking About GRAHAMDBROWN
3. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM Contents 1. Success story 2. Bankruptcy 3. Focus 4. Word of Mouth 5. Co-Creation
4. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM …and we’ll use my BRAND EXPERIENCE flywheel to understand the case study
5. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM 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
6. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM 1. The Success Story The World’s Most Valuable Toy Brand
7. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM Share the love don’t forget to   hit the LIKE button so other Slideshare users can discover this too
8. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM Selling 1200 Bricks a second
9. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM 4 Billion LEGO figures shipped
10. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM 86 bricks for every person in the world
11. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM11 PDF FILE PDF & KEYNOTE FILE GET this Presentation Choose the PDF or PDF + KEYNOTE option
12. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM Bear in mind that 10 years ago, LEGO was only #5
13. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM Not bad for a privately owned company!
14. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM To answer this we need to focus on what LEGO means not what LEGO is
15. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM …driven by a   strong brand
16. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM
17. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM
18. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM …but
19. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM 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
21. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM surprised? Here’s a brand with several billion dollars in sales… not driven by sales
22. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM well, LEGO’s success is all about long term customer relationships
23. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM …but it wasn’t always that way
24. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM 2. Bankruptcy The Dark Side of the LEGO Story
25. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM $300 Million Loss (FY 2003) 10 years ago, LEGO was in a very dark place indeed…
26. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM LEGO was a DINOSAUR, a has-‐ been from another era
27. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM “plastic bricks are out of place in a digital world”
28. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM 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
29. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM LEGO lost touch
30. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM We’ll look at the 3 aspects of what turned the brand around
31. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM So, what’s the blueprint?
32. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM 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
33. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM 3. Focus How LEGO rediscovered PLAY
34. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM LEG GODT  Danish for “play well” This is LEGO’s simple brand truth that it forgot…
35. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM Play = LEGO’s Brand Truth
36. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM 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
37. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM What a few insightful LEGO execs understood was that even in the digital era, people still valued face-‐to-‐face interaction
38. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM LEGO needed to reconnect with these FANS to rediscover their truth…
39. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM39 “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
40. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM Let’s look at WHY they built their business around FANS first…
41. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM 4. Word of Mouth How LEGO made FANS their brand
42. 1. FOCUS 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
43. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM 13 Million (Unofficial LEGO Youtube Videos) And it’s working, with this much word of mouth, your marketing becomes a lot more effective
44. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM
45. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM in the Connection Economy, if people aren’t sharing your brand
46. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM …you don’t exist So, LEGO’s challenge is not trying to reengineer the LEGO story but engineering tools to help FANS tell theirs…
47. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM
48. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM 5 million #LEGO photos on Instagram
49. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM These “unofficial” conversations are the LEGO brand
50. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM 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”
52. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM LEGO understands that the real heroes of the brand
53. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM …are the FANS
54. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM …because every FAN looks at your marketing and asks, “where am I in this story?”
55. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM
56. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM And storytelling is whatever FANS say it is: often simple but devastatingly effective
57. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM Now, let’s look at HOW they built their business around FANS
58. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM 5. Co-Creation How LEGO turned FANS into Factories
59. 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 1. FOCUS The key here is how LEGO built their experience around the interaction of FANS: platforms to share ideas and events to connect
60. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM It first starts with breaking down the walls…
61. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM61 “we actively encourage our fans to interact with us and suggest product ideas”
62. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM …and building platforms to house the conversation
63. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM This is LEGO IDEAS -‐ their robust crowdsourcing platform
64. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM REBRICK is just of the many sites showcasing LEGO FAN work
65. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM …accepting that LEGO’s “department of great ideas” doesn’t exist inside the company
66. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM66 “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
67. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM …leveraging the idea loyalty transfer of existing FAN bases…
68. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM Most popular project submitted to LEGO Ideas -‐ instant success plugging into vocal FAN base of the Minecraft community
69. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM LEGO IDEAS helps the brand tap into different communities and give those FANS tools to connect
70. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM …no more guess work So much traditional marketing -‐ from focus groups to advertising -‐ is just pure guess work
71. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM Working with FANS means making the market tell YOU what it wants But FANS de-‐risk the process for all
72. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM Market research? Pre-‐ launch marketing? Brand partnerships? All of the above…
73. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM Working with FANS means baking marketing into the production process
74. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM When 10,000 people support an idea, you already have a market ready for launch
75. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM Working with FANS means understanding innovation is what people do, but connection is   why the do it…
76. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM The key to LEGO success is using online to augment not replace the offline experience
77. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM At the end of the day, what’s shared is the less important than the nature of sharing itself
78. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM And LEGO plays a vital role in helping FANS join the dots…
79. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM Working with FANS means creating a FRONTLINE and push your people there…
80. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM Working with FANS means building a CULTURE that allows employees to think long term and build relationships
81. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM81 “Nine out of ten times [customers] may tell you something you know or something you consider vaguely relevant…”
82. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM82 “…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
83. GRAHAMDBROWN.COM 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 GET this Presentation Choose the PDF or PDF + KEYNOTE option

The world

Wednesday, May 13, 2015