{"id":82568,"date":"2013-03-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-02T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/lego-social-media-five-lessons-from-the-toy-brand\/"},"modified":"2013-03-03T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-02T22:00:00","slug":"lego-social-media-five-lessons-from-the-toy-brand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/lego-social-media-five-lessons-from-the-toy-brand\/","title":{"rendered":"LEGO social media: five lessons from the toy brand"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article was originally published in Dutch in 2013 and has been translated and updated in October 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 2012, the Danish toy maker LEGO reported revenue of 4.04 billion dollars<\/a>, the highest in its 81-year history at that point. Net profit rose to 969 million dollars in 2012, up from 776 million dollars in 2011. The strong result came mainly from product innovation: ‘LEGO Friends’, a range aimed specifically at girls, proved to be a hit. LEGO’s own research showed that the number of girls playing with LEGO bricks in the US had tripled, and that the gender balance of its toys had become more even. Clearly, LEGO was doing something right. On social media too. So here are five lessons we can learn from LEGO.<\/p>\n

1. Social presence: be there<\/h3>\n

LEGO had an overwhelming presence on social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest and Google+ (Google closed the consumer version of Google+ in 2019). Each of these channels was used with real enthusiasm. Alongside its presence on existing social networks, LEGO also ran its own social media platform at the time: ReBrick<\/a>. There, users (from teenagers to adults) could share their ideas, photos and opinions (in other words, ‘user-generated content’) with one another, often linked to other communities around LEGO.<\/p>\n

At a ‘Social Brands’ seminar in London, Lars Silberbauer, then head of social media at LEGO, stressed the value of social media. “It goes beyond getting ‘likes’. According to Silberbauer, fan engagement on social media adds value for LEGO in four ways: higher sales, more efficient marketing, stronger brand affinity and better brand protection.” Instead of the brand advertising itself, it is the LEGO fans who do it on the brand’s behalf. That saves marketing budget, but far more importantly, this kind of promotion is much more credible and effective.<\/p>\n

2. Make use of content (marketing)<\/h3>\n

Across its social media platforms, LEGO made clever use of content marketing. It created content in many forms and used it for multimedia storytelling: it published magazines, offered several mobile apps, and produced mini-movies and microsites. Everything was aimed at specific ‘buyer personas’.<\/p>\n

On the networks, users were encouraged to share their own content. The ‘about’ section of the Facebook page<\/a> read at the time: “Hello! You made it to the official LEGO Facebook page. We know you’re all awesome builders, so we want to see your LEGO photos, videos and stories too!”.<\/em><\/p>\n

Encouraging users to share content is a good social media strategy for involving them actively with the product. Besides the official LEGO YouTube channel, LEGO also had a ‘LEGO Club’ video channel featuring creations by LEGO Club members. LEGO also used cross-media promotion.<\/p>\n

For Valentine’s Day 2013, for example, LEGO created a #LEGO #Valentine hashtag<\/a> on Twitter and encouraged people to use it on other social networks such as Facebook and Pinterest.<\/p>\n

3. Build social media skills across the board<\/h3>\n

There are big benefits when everyone in a company knows how to handle social media. Not just the people in the communications and marketing departments, but every employee in the organisation. HR can use social media for recruitment, and customer service can use it as a channel for contact. Enthusiastic employees are valuable ambassadors for their company. The company becomes a social business.<\/p>\n

LEGO recognised how important social media knowledge is and developed a training programme for everyone in the company who dealt with social media in any way. According to Silberbauer, many companies fail to really understand social media. In an internal communication course, employees and managers learned how to connect with their audience through social media. Silberbauer noticed that managers often got nervous about communicating directly with customers, even though that is exactly what strengthens brand loyalty.<\/p>\n

For senior management, the one-day course ended with a compulsory theory and practical exam. To pass, managers had to publish a post on LEGO’s Facebook page, which had 4 million fans at the time. Silberbauer: “When they get 500 likes on their post, that’s when they really understand what social media is about.”<\/p>\n

Silberbauer described a successful promotion on the social network that used a photo from a fan: “Within six hours we had reached around one million people, and around 8,000 people visited our online shop and generated $10,000 in sales. That promotion took 15 minutes of work and cost nothing in advertising.” Silberbauer admitted that you cannot do this every four hours, but it made the commercial value of social media very clear.<\/p>\n

4. Use crowdsourcing and co-creation<\/h3>\n

LEGO was a pioneer in co-creation, giving consumers a voice in the development of new themes. LEGO themes such as ‘Adventures’, ‘Technic’, ‘Rock Raiders’ and ‘Systems’ had always been conceived and developed by LEGO’s own creative team. From 2005, LEGO users and fans could come up with and develop their own themes through the ‘LEGO Factory’ platform, which was later renamed ‘DesignByMe’. From early 2013, co-creation took place through CUUSOO<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the CUUSOO co-creation platform, customers could upload their own designs. Every quarter, LEGO reviewed the designs that had reached 10,000 likes, and the best ones actually went into production. The designer’s reward was a 1% royalty on net sales. At the time, more than 3,000 designs were uploaded each week. As a result, participation by adults rose sharply. They saw that LEGO was not just for children, and they got the chance to share a passion with like-minded people.<\/p>\n

5. Create brand awareness<\/h3>\n

LEGO is extremely good at generating ‘buzz around the brand’. One way it does this is through campaigns. In December 2012, for instance, there was the ‘Holiplay’ campaign. The idea was simple: build something with LEGO, combine it with something from your surroundings (‘brickmented reality’), take a photo and post it on the campaign website. People also went on to share their photos on all kinds of social media themselves. The campaign was a huge hit. The best photos were selected and put together in a short film. Within three weeks, people from 119 countries had taken part, and the film was viewed more than 150,000 times.<\/p>\n

Watch the film below about how LEGO used social media and what it achieved.
\nhttp:\/\/vimeo.com\/konstellation\/happyholiplay<\/p>\n

Another good example of brand awareness is the story of seven-year-old Luka Apps from early 2013. On a trip to a shopping centre he lost one of his LEGO minifigures, so he emailed customer service to ask whether they could send him a new one. Richard, a customer service employee, sent him a witty reply. He turned it into a fun story and posted the boy a new minifigure, together with some other nice extras. Thanks to social media, the story went viral in no time, which in turn generated huge brand awareness.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h3>\n

With the right skills inside the company and room for the creativity of your fans, customers and employees, social media can enrich your brand. Let LEGO’s mindset inspire you to experiment with innovation on social media platforms and to involve your fans as product developers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published in Dutch in 2013 and has been translated and updated in October 2026. In 2012, the Danish toy maker LEGO reported revenue of 4.04 billion dollars, the highest in its 81-year history at that point. Net profit rose to 969 million dollars in 2012, up from 776 million dollars in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":44357,"parent":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2877],"tags":[],"article-type":[],"trends":[],"class_list":["post-82568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82568"},{"taxonomy":"article-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-type?post=82568"},{"taxonomy":"trends","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richardvanhooijdonk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/trends?post=82568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}