The Lego Group is a privately held 68-yearold multibillion-dollar global toy brick company based in Billund, Denmark. In 2015, Lego replaced Ferrari as Brand Finance’s world’s most powerful brand. Lego last year turned over NZ$4.2 billion, and spent millions – maybe hundreds of millions – globally on advertising, marketing and PR.
M+AD talked to Troy Taylor, Lego Group’s Australia-based head of marketing for NZ & Australia, about the group’s marketing activities on this side of the Tasman.
Where are you based?
Sydney.”
How often do you visit NZ?
The team is actively involved in the New Zealand market and visits on a regular basis.
Does the NZ office have a marketing person?
Not at this stage; my team is based in Australia and currently manage both the Australian & New Zealand markets.
Who are your ad agencies in NZ?
FCB Media.
And your creative agency?
Ensemble. [Taylor did not elaborate – he was referring to full spectrum ‘brand experience’ agency Ensemble in Surry Hills, Sydney – ensemble.agency.]
What are LEGO’s business and marketing strategies in NZ?
Our ambition is to create memorable Lego experiences for children and families. We try and do this through all our marketing efforts ensuring there is a fun and humorous tone with the brick at the core of everything we do. The New Zealand market is mature with high brand affinity and is an important market to the Lego Group.
Lego Duplo, our pre-school brand, is a priority focus for us as we are committed to promoting imagination and learning through play and its importance for early childhood.
In New Zealand we’ve partnered with the Playcentre Federation to support their mission of providing quality early childhood education through play. We’ve donated Duplo play kits to playcentres in Auckland and created specially designed workbooks with build activities for kids.
From counting to storytelling and communication skills, there are a lot of benefits for growing children and helping to prepare them for school.
The Auckland Xmas tree project is an impressive undertaking – how does this fits into the marketing plan?
The Lego Christmas Tree, which is featured in Aotea Square, is the largest Lego Christmas Tree in the Southern Hemisphere – half a million bricks and taller than a two storey house. This activation forms a key pillar in our Build Your Lego Christmas campaign. The focus of the campaign is creativity, and through the Lego Christmas Tree we hope to inspire children to build, and think big.
Coinciding with this activation we have a stop motion series of content using Lego bricks where we ask children to help save Christmas by designing Santa a new sleigh using Lego. The winning Sleigh will then be featured in our final Lego stop motion TV commercial for Christmas, making a child’s creation the hero of our campaign. The link to the Build Your Lego Christmas site here.
Do you do creative in-house?
“No, not in our local offices at this stage. Our global offices do have internal resource to manage creative which we sometimes leverage, and most of our localisation is handled via an external creative agency based in Australia.”
Thank you
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