The brief was simple: convert Sonic fans' (both kids aged 6-12 and adult shoppers) affection for the franchise and video games into love for LEGO Sonic.

The catch? No paid support – only leveraging shared and owned channels. We needed creative strategies to maximize impact on SEGA's platforms, as well as activating the 25% of the active fanbase – adult fans of the 90s videogame eager to share their Sonic love with their kids during this long-awaited comeback moment.

The challenge–an idea with outsized media impact in terms of reach and earned buzz to fulfill our objectives:

Achieve awareness of LEGO Sonic across key markets +7p.p

Beat internal reach & engagement benchmarks

Drive desire for LEGO Sonic sets

Classic advertising wasn’t going to work. If we wanted to win over this gaming fandom, we were going to have to earn it and entertain the heck out of them.

Eggman Trolls LEGO Sonic was simple - LEGO Eggman sabotages the partnership launch from the inside out as retaliation.

The strategy asked “What Would Eggman Do?” guiding the execution to infiltrate launch plans across the ecosystems.

We sparked fan frenzy by withholding the Eggman set from the official PR video, only to subtly feature it lurking in the shadows. Then sent vandalized LEGO Sonic sets to influencers, capturing their surprise. We hacked into SEGA's biggest annual event – Sonic Central livestream, launching LEGO Eggman with a character-first rap about his set (which nearly broke the internet) and called for fan build submissions to “fix” LEGO Sonic. Invaded the popular Sonic Forces mobile game and the Sonic Superstars game with LEGO Eggman DLC content. Long-form content entertained fans with easter eggs and deep lore references, while following LEGO Eggman’s takeover of LEGO HQ, factories, stores, and seeding chaos everywhere.

Humor, epitomized by the absurdist @sonic_hedgehog Twitter account, defined Sonic fans. Our success hinged on understanding exactly what makes this fandom, fueled by ironic memes and in-jokes, tick.

Through social listening, it became clear: For this unruly, chaos-loving bunch, making fun of the franchise and loving the franchise is the same thing. In fact, cracking self-deprecating jokes was their love language.

So when we unearthed reams of frankly hilarious memes of the “ugly” brick-built Eggman on Reddit, Discord, Youtube and other social channels, we knew we had a golden nugget of an insight. To translate love for Sonic into love for LEGO Sonic, we needed to make fun of ourselves. This wasn’t a partnership launch, this was redemption.

Our strategy to build the community was to shift the focus onto Eggman finally getting the minifigure respect he deserves, and milk it for maximum effect.

Since the fans of Sonic are very discerning, it was a conscious effort to produce content as authentic and engaging as possible – less commercial, more entertainment.

Lo-fi production value, handheld camera treatment and analogue theatrics were ingrained in each of the four-part campaign to achieve the LEGO Sonic flavour and texture consistently.

There were discussions around keeping the personalities and traits of the characters intact, most especially Eggman as he is the most formidable foe of Sonic. In the world of SEGA, he doesn’t rap at all. So we had to create this new persona in the LEGO world where Eggman drops bars like a pro. The creator of Sonic and Eggman appreciated the version of LEGO Eggman in the universe we formed. This also secures the flexibility and longevity of the LEGO tonality for the succeeding campaigns.

The results were phenomenal in reaching our objectives:

14 billion impressions in total

1.9 billion in potential earned PR reach alone - more than 11x what a comparable LEGO set launch achieved in a similar timeframe.

300% more PR mentions in the first 28h than high performing assets for comparable set launches. Article mentions include mainstream, gaming and pop culture-related media sites not limited to Reddit, Kotaku, Hypebeast, Metro UK, Polygon, IGN, and Forbes.

Social media engagement beating internal benchmarks by 2X, with overwhelmingly positive reaction of a 2200% increase in joy.

US$1M estimated earned social value

Average wishlisting of 12.1%

And not insignificantly, community reactions ranging from comments like “I saw the ending and peed my pants," to a fan-made 10hour loop of LEGO Eggman’s rap, to endlessly creative ugly Sonic fan builds, showed a success in translating love for the franchise into love for the partnership.