Company Name – The LEGO Group
Founded by – Ole Kirk Christiansen
LEGO is one of the renowned names not only among the toy industry but also among the heart of every kid who is acquainted with building blocks of LEGO. LEGO is a company which produces plastic toys for constructing plastic figures that are monitored by the parent company, “The LEGO Group” based on Billund, Denmark.
It is a privately held company which stands alone as it kind because of being patented. Being one of the emerging toy companies, the annual revenue for the year 216 was summed up to 9.4 billion with more than 19,000 employees.
How It All Started
The company came into the existence with wooden toys created by Ole Kirk Christiansen back at his workshop. He started it off with his wooden toys which later got replaced with plastic interlocking bricks. The brand name was given by its founder that has been derived from the Danish word ‘leg godt’, which mean ‘play well’.
The production of plastic toys began on August 10, 1932. In 1947, the company expanded to produce more plastic toys. The toys were made on the basis of Self-Locking bricks by Kiddicraft, the company which had patented back in 1939 in the United Kingdom.
The building bricks were designed to in such a way that every single brick irrespective of its size, fits perfectly with the rest of the bricks. The LEGO was first launched as multi-colored building bricks which were later introduced with attractive themes and trending cartoon characters.
Launching
The company started producing its toy from Billund, Denmark which later expanded to other different countries such as Hungary, Mexico, and recently in China. However, the company has gone through a lot of ups and own but it continued giving its utmost efforts to become better than the best.
The company has also built several amusement parks across the globe which is known by the name of ‘Legoland’ and also monitors various other small retail stores. By the mid of 2015, the company stood to become of the world’s largest toy manufacturer on the basis of its revenue.
The LEGO Group stepped in North America in 1992 when Mall of America was inaugurated in Bloomington, Minnesota. LEGO entered the European market back in 2002 with its first store in Cologne, Germany. Later it followed launching more of its store in Milton, UK, and many other places worldwide. In India, the first store was launched by Funskool in Chennai, Tamil Nadu back in March 2014.
Marketing Strategy of LEG and interesting reasons behind its success
Product Strategy of LEGO
LEGO, being one of the giants in the toy industry has not limited its offerings to LEGO bricks but has expanded its product line with a long list of products and services. The product line includes broad games such as Minotaurus, Ramses, Pyramid, and Creationary. The Lego Movies such as the Adventure of Clutch Power, The Lego Batman Movie, The Lego city series and many more. The company has also come up with the Lego-themed clothing line for kids.
Pricing Strategy of LEGO
The Lego toys are targeted for the kid under the age of 12 years and above the age of 3 years. It is because the cut edged design of the bricks might cause painful and choking hazards. The company targeted the families which belong to the middle to the upper-income level group as the toys are, honestly, not cheap neither very easily affordable. It is because of the way it has been produced.
Before dispatching the batches into the market, the toys undergo a rigorous test to get qualified for packaging. A very keen as well as competitive pricing policy has been used to maintain both profitabilities of the company and affordability of the targeted consumers. Asking a very premium price might discourage potential customers of the middle-level income group.
Placing Strategy of Lego
Headquarter of the company is based in Billund, Denmark whereas its big production units are located in the US, UK, China, and Singapore. Lego has made its availability among 132 retail outlets across the globe, most of which are located in the US. Retail stores are not only the resources of buying Lego toys but amusement parks, movie theaters, departmental store and also online shopping destinations. The toys are being exported to different to make its accessibility even more convenient. However, when LEGO faced a financial crisis, it took an initiative to offer their toys to the entire European and Asian countries. The company launched distribution centers across to places different to cut logistics costs.
Promotional strategy of LEGO
Lego has uses an astounding promotional strategy through its products itself. Initially, it started with selling a set of normal building bricks and figurines. Later the company introduced theme based sets of the same building bricks such as Fire Truck, Star Wars, Train, Minecraft, and several others. It has also created movies and games which plays a major role in the overall promotional activities. There is even an official website which awards badges and recognition for completing certain tasks in the games.
LEGO’s Campaign
Because of its diversified choices of toys, Lego has launched numerous advertisement campaigns to create awareness of its latest toys. Some of them are listed below
- ‘Get Ready for Fun’
This is campaign was launched to promote Legoland as the ultimate destination for kids to live their wild imagination by depicting a range of ginormous fantasy creatures such as a dinosaur, octopus and also a dragon.
- ‘Continuity Bat’
This campaign was run to create awareness of the ‘The Lego Batman Movie’. Here the Lego Batman is being seen as taking over Channel 4’s ad breaks.
- ‘The Brick Thief’
A short film was created by an agency of San Francisco, Pereira, and O’Dell. This was a short and surreal film which was created as an extension of Lego’s ‘click’ campaign, aired in the US.
Conclusion
The company has a legacy of more than 100 years by the hands of Ole Kirk, started making his wooden toys since 1895. Even after facing numerous hindrances and economic changes the company has successfully sustained to stand as a powerful brand today.
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