In recent years, technology has changed what it means to ‘play well’, and the humble LEGO brick faced being consigned to the history books.

LEGO Australia asked us to develop a creative communications strategy to celebrate a very special milestone – the 50th anniversary of the LEGO brick in Australia. The brief was to create an event or events using PR, experiential, social and digital, that would inspire the LEGO builders of the future.

To maximise impact, we agreed the programme needed a big, campaignable idea with editorial currency throughout that could work across multiple channels across different audiences, areas of Australia and over the year.

The result was the LEGO Festival of Play, a nine-month schedule of activity, online and in the real world, where Australians could join in celebrating half a century of fun and inspiration through play.

Activations included a giant LEGO Forest, an outdoor exhibition of LEGO mosaics, and a 8m x 3m Pop Up Play Pit, to name a few.

The huge earned media success was achieved with only 10% of the total budget spent on media support and no ATL activity at all, highlighting the strength of the content created in engaging consumers and media alike.

The Festival generated 761 pieces of editorial coverage with a PR value of $10 million, reaching 40 million people nationally. 82% included key campaign messaging. There were 52,000 Facebook ‘likes’, 450,000 branded content views and 400,000 Australians took part in experiential activations.

In April, we seeded out a 90 second stop-frame animated campaign trailer, voiced by Australian actor Michael Caton, that followed the story of LEGO from its arrival with salesman John Peddie in 1962 to now.

A giant pop-up LEGO forest then appeared in Sydney’s Martin Place, driving coverage and providing us with striking imagery to distribute to online titles, as well as being shared by the public through social media.

Throughout 2012, we leveraged multiple real-world and online activations including:

• an outdoor public art gallery of LEGO mosaics, designed by 10 of Australia’s leading creatives

• the unveiling of a new way to work with LEGO using Google’s Chrome browser

• enlisting British photographer Mike Stimpson to recreate 10 favourite Australian moments using LEGO minifigures

• constructing a LEGO billboard displaying messages sent by the public and;

• installing a 3m x 8m LEGO brick and pop-up play pit in Melbourne’s Queensbridge Square

Business

• The Festival contributed to an increase of 18% in consumer sales in 2012*

*Source: NPD Data

Campaign

• 15:1 ROI

• 400k+ footfall via experiential activations

• 450k branded content views

• 52k Facebook likes

• 157,000 Campaign website unique visits

• 761 pieces of editorial coverage

• 82% Key message inclusion

Overview

The huge earned and social media success of the campaign was achieved with only 10% of the total budget spent on media support and no ATL activity at all...highlighting the strength of the branded content created from experiential and digital activities pushed out through PR in engaging consumers and media alike.

Helping to prove the original challenge set out to us, that LEGO is as relevant today as it was 50 years ago.