The objective was simple: Make LEGO the undisputed No.1 creative play brand in China whilst achieving 25% growth.

Globally LEGO is an iconic and much loved brand. In China, LEGO is just trying to establish itself by recruiting ‘new builders’ and winning parental endorsement.

LEGO faces a number of barriers:

Firstly, China doesn’t have a culture of play. A highly competitive school system has created an ‘all work, no play’ culture, where Chinese parents over-prioritize homework and extra-curriculum activities. Play is negated as something of no value to future careers.

Secondly, today’s parents didn’t grow up with LEGO so there is no loyalty, brand understanding or nostalgia from their own childhoods for it to be an instinctive purchase for their own kids.

Thirdly, China was flooded with identikit fakes priced at 1/10th of LEGO.

The launch of ‘LEGO CITY: Arctic Adventure’ was the first opportunity to break through these barriers.

To find insights we work with child psychologists using quantitative & ethnography research to firstly learn about kids and then how to think like kids.

Through this, we discovered just how much Chinese kids are suffering under immense pressure to excel academically.

They do the highest hours of homework and extra curriculum activities globally at 7.5 hours and 6.3 hours per week respectively. This drives high levels of stress resulting in many cases of physical and mental illness.

It also leaves parents anxious and conflicted between sanctioning happy play sessions or more classes/homework.

Understanding this, we decided to create a ‘play well’ revolution built around ‘learn through play’ experiences:

The aim was a series of Play & Learn adventures built around LEGO products that would answer the kids need for play, and the parents wish for learning whilst relieving the stress and pressures for both.

The strategy was: ‘Spike’ curiosity; ‘Spark’ parent & child conversations and ‘Ignite’ adventures.

The Arctic was actually little known to Chinese kids which we felt actually made this a strong opportunity to build play & learn adventures:

Firstly we SPIKED kids’ curiosity by focusing on the amazing animals, from polar bears to walruses, found in the Arctic.

Then we SPARKED conversations by targeting parent & child co-viewing opportunities.

And finally we IGNITED Arctic Adventures with LEGO by connecting every touch-point into a content hub with pre-designed adventures that allowed parent and kids to perfectly mirror play with learning.

To help fuel the spike, spark and ignite phases we partnered Nat Geo Kids to balance LEGO’s playful content with education and informative content. This combined pool of content formed the backbone of the content.

We also used targeting tags to reach ‘progressive parents’ and re-targeting to drive parent adventurers to retail.

Spike, Spark, Ignite:

To SPIKE curiosity we utilized kids TV children’s stations and pre-rolls focusing emphasizing Arctic animals.

We also partnered Zuoyebang, a kids education app, featuring an Arctic discovery zone and live Q&A sessions that went viral with hilarious question such as ‘How do you poo in the Arctic?

To SPARK conversations we targeted family content on the top 3 videos sites, iQiyi, Youku & Tencent Video.

We also turned the metro to the Shanghai Natural History Museum into an Arctic Discovery Zone turning a mundane Metro tunnel into an impactful recreations of the Arctic with interactive video.

To IGNITE adventures every touch-point, including in-store, carried scanable links into the content hub.

For converting shoppers, we used Wechat Moments to run product information videos whilst also re-targeting parent adventurers. Both activities used JD-Tencent data to hyper target high value buyers and directed to the LEGO store on JD.com.

The campaign achieved results beyond expectations.

The launch campaign saw a staggering 78% sales uplift in Sept, the first month of the campaign versus the previous month. This was three times the 25% target.

Brand tracking also showed that LEGO brand awareness, brand desire and the number of ‘brand enthusiasts’ reached record peaks during September and October.

Each individual element also performed beyond expectations:

On Zuoyebang, kids were so excited by LEGO’s Arctic Adventure content, the landing page received 21M views, over 14K likes and even earned over 1400+ kids.

The Arctic Adventure Zone by Natural History Museum created a wow impact on the brand, attracting many families to take pictures and share on social media achieving LEGO’s highest ever share of buzz.

And with the majority of sales coming from ‘new builders’ Arctic Adventure clearly helped move LEGO along the path to No.1 iconic toy brand in China.