Put together a list of Lego-based stunts and it would be as long as your proverbial, from animated Star Wars re-enactments to a certain long-haired, car-loving, leather-jacketed gentleman giving them an hour or so of BBC airtime as he built a house out of his beloved bricks.
During this merry yuletide season Lego has excelled itself, building an epic little number.
They’ve partnered-up with everyone’s favourite train terminus to create a twelve foot Lego Christmas tree, timed ideally to get the brand across every paper I’ve looked at in the run-up to the big day.
Quite why there is no timelapse film of its creation to be found on YouTube, I cannot even begin to speculate, an almost inexcusable oversight. But anyway for the time-being at least, the St Pancras-based plastic monolith will have to be represented here only by the following punter’s footage (with thanks to BizarreTom).
All very cute.
However, amazing trick about this brand as far as the media is concerned is that the average news editor seems to care not a jot that they are shilling a commercial organisation on their pages and airwaves – giving Lego acres of space of product coverage they would never dream of offering to anyone else.
Now Lego’s ability to secure coverage despite being a toy company in it to make cash as fast as it can is nowhere near the epic proportions of the BBC’s pushing of Twitter and Facebook (something someone should probably have a pop at another day), but it is remarkable.
They have managed to pull off the trick of convincing enough in media-land that they are a generic – a brick rather than a brand – when it suits them to be so. And, just as if someone had built an epic structure from breeze blocks or straw the fact that Lego is a brand should not get in the way of a good story.
It’s a stunning trick to have pulled and one that drives the Lego PR machine globally on an almost-daily basis …
Time, then, to salute Lego stunts past with these five being particular favourites of years gone by (ahem, adopt best “Harry Hill doing You’ve Been Framed Voice) …
1. The Lego wedding in bricks was an act of genius from Windsor-based Legoland …
2. The old “replace a blokes’ car while he isn’t looking” stunt … look, we’ve all pitched one or two of these in our time haven’t we? I remember suggesting stealing football players’ cars and replacing them with crushed versions while they were training for an insurance company. It was a pitch I lost. Anyway, here it is done Lego style …
3. Then there was this record breaking effort to create the world’s largest tower of the bricks …
4. Not strictly speaking a Lego stunt (though with Lego, who ever knows whether it was a punter or a PR), but the brand has built such a following that artists and amateurs alike will now cheerfully piggy-back its publicity to raise their own profiles. Here are the infamous album covers recreated in Lego by “artist” Aaron Savage (aged 13) …
5. And finally for your delight and delectation, a recent clip that has already (at the time of writing) clocked up well over 1 million views. As well as punters jumping the Lego band-wagon, brands will from time-to-time cotton onto the same trick. As in this little viral from Kooberz Studios …
So there you have it. Lego: a business that has built a brand in PR for itself brick-by-brick …
This article was first published on PR Moment. But we thought that we would put it up here too. Just in case anyone missed it, I guess. Image credit: KennyMatic
