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Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

joshsummers.co.uk

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Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#91

Post by jacquesm »

agumonkey wrote: post #58
jacquesm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how long ago it expired and how terrible the competition is I think Lego is the poster company for showing that execution quality is crucial.

That's weird, I read about it really not long ago. Maybe they tried to delay things through legal means. That said yes, the LEGO company put a lot of thinking in their 'toys'. I think it's also the way things were done in those days, now it's all ship often, ship cheap.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lego_Group

Heading 'trademarks and patents', the last patent expired in '89.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#92

Post by xenophonf »

pavlov wrote: post #2

Both the product and the ad are highly representative of '70s Nordic social ethics and aesthetics. A single product line called "Universal Building Sets" is an almost Platonic ideal of democratic creativity. Today's Lego has 33 product lines: http://www.lego.com/en-us/products When your Legos are branded as "Chima", "Bionicle", "Ninjago", "Marvel(tm) Super Heroes" or "Disney(r) Star Wars(tm)", it's expected that you…

    it's expected that you play within the existing
    marketeer-created universe
Maybe that's how you or your kids play with them, but here we have no problem kitbashing the branded sets. Their parts end up in the color-sorted bins along with all the rest, and the kids build crazy stuff out of whatever. The last round included parts from a city, a dinosaur, and a submarine, and those were just the ones I recognized. We even mix Megabloks and Duplo with our Legos. Now, if I could only get the kids to pick up the parts when they finish...

Kitbashing is _the_ plot driver of the Lego movie, in that it's what Master Builders do.

Notice how the Lego Club magazine highlights people's creative builds.

I want to postulate that Lego's endpoint is not static sculpture, but active imagination. Consider fan fiction. Sometimes we want to create stories inside someone else's universe. Hasn't your imagination been sparked by some favorite movie or book or artwork? Have you ever wanted to tell the rest of the story? I know I did! That's why I flew my Duplo Millenium Falcon around the living room. I don't see how a more realistic version would have been less fun, or less imaginative. And that's the point of the branded sets. They're fun! With any luck someday soon I will be able to build model rockets that look a lot like what explodes on my launchpad in KSP, only my kids and I will be able to fly those around the living room, pretending the sofa is Planet Klystron, home of the savage (but peaceful) race of Mer-mole-men (Lego people with frickin' sharks heads!) Meanwhile, Superman arrives to rescue our stranded Kerbals, whose ship (naturally) blew up upon launch.

And so on.

It's about the stories we can tell ourselves and each other. In-universe. Something wholly new. It doesn't matter. Do whatever it takes to get you or your kids' imaginations jumpstarted.

Or at least that's what I'm after when I buy a Lego set (branded or not). It looks cool, and it sets my imagination racing.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#94

Post by theoh »

Jgrubb wrote: post #60
robbiep wrote: post #56

Lego. The toy of my childhood. My brother, sister and myself are the youngest of our cousins, and ended up inheriting all their Lego. We had a whole verandah (grew up in Australia in the country) filled with our Lego city. It became all encompassing. We had no close neighbors(nearest was 6 km away) and no console until the n64 was old so it was Lego or helping Dad on the farm. We had the most detailed alternate reali…

No, Lego still does. Mine just discovered them this past Christmas. They'll build them 5 times in a row and then trade with each other so they can build a new one. I tell ya, as much as I remember loving Legos when I was a kid, there is absolutely nothing as cool as building them with your own kids. Also, they still sell those big boxes of random pieces. I think it's called the "Classic" line or something like that.

Where did you get the idea that the toy is plural? It's not.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#95

Post by facepalm »

Rambunctious wrote: post #78
olavk wrote: post #55

A subtlety which is not mentioned in the article: Why do we like the ad? Because it it targeted towards grownups! This is due to the understanding in the Lego company at the time, that parents decided what to buy for their children. Therefore ads where aimed towards parents, explaining how Lego help the kids develop and learn and so on. But better market analysis later showed that it was a mistaken belief. Actually i…

While it may be the case that kids these days demand and get the kind of toys they want, it is also the case (at least in certain cultures) that parents obsess a lot on what kind of toys make their kids 'smarter', 'happier', etc. So, Lego could look at ads that target parents in some of their markets.

You think? Maybe they would hire you as a marketing consultant, because they probably never got round to thinking about that kind of thing. Not sure if "marketing" is even a thing in socialist countries like Denmark.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#96

Post by facepalm »

RodericDay wrote: post #93

Anita Sarkeesian has a great couple of videos on Lego's transition from advertising like this, to advertising in a heavily gendered way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrmRxGLn0Bk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe65EGkB9kA

Yeah she has hit a very simple scheme to create her videos: pick some selection that has an arbitrary bias of her choice. Claim on video that "all of x" has said bias. (Another way to describe it would be "anecdotal evidence").

So in a video she would show only gendered Lego, omitting all the non-gendered Lego. Or she shows only video games with scantily clad women, omitting the context (might be portrayed as despicable to mistreat a woman in the video game, but taken out of context you may only see that a women is mistreated in the game), and omitting the zillions of video games that have nothing to do with women or gender at all. That way she "proves" that Lego is sexist and video games are sexist, and I don't know what else (haven't watched all her drivel).

People apparently believe anything that is presented on film.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#98

Post by aerique »

pavlov wrote: post #2

Both the product and the ad are highly representative of '70s Nordic social ethics and aesthetics. A single product line called "Universal Building Sets" is an almost Platonic ideal of democratic creativity. Today's Lego has 33 product lines: http://www.lego.com/en-us/products When your Legos are branded as "Chima", "Bionicle", "Ninjago", "Marvel(tm) Super Heroes" or "Disney(r) Star Wars(tm)", it's expected that you…

I can only give you an anecdotal counter point but Lego is still fine. Instead of asking for a universal building set like I did, my 5 year old old son now ask for a specific Chima or Star Wars box and then we build the vehicle on the box.

After that things get still get ripped apart and combined into new things. It's still mostly a bunch of colored brick except the modern boxes contain a couple more custom bricks which make his own creations look even more awesome.

Lego is still a good (or even better) for kids nowadays than it was 30 years ago.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#99

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

maxerickson wrote: post #51
pavlov wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, you can only buy something else within the range of options on the market. Ideally companies adjust their product lines based on customer demand. In reality it's mostly determined by other factors like supply chain, internal politics, competitor envy, random advice from consultants, need to meet quarterly growth goals, etc. For example, high-fructose corn syrup has become a major ingredient of many American fo…

Consumers could have demanded products without corn syrup in them. It turns out they don't care. If people did care, those other factors probably would have had to take a back seat to consumer demand. So I don't think you can say that it was irrelevant to the rise of HFCS. (You can argue that people are ill informed and blah blah blah, but that's still them not caring enough to demand whatever it is you think they sh…

People aren't just ill-informed - they live under a perpetual onslaught of advertising.

Try taking away the advertising if you want to give people a free choice.

Or balance it with an equivalent level of glossy but fact-based media persuasion about the true effects of HFCS, smoking, etc.

Re: Lego’s 1981 Ad Campaign

#100

Post by FailMore »

duncanawoods wrote: post #64
corin_ wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have sources but I'm sure I've read studies against praising achievement. I'm sure if combined well with praising effort it can work well, but it should be a way of helping judge effort, not praised for and of itself. For example if a child constantly gets Bs in a certain subject then getting an A can be an indicator that they've put more effort in - but the A itself shouldn't be the reason for the praise.

Yep, effort\achievement shouldn't be considered as independent. What I do think is important is to kill dead this notion that achievement is not a necessary consideration for how to praise. For example: I would be cautious about praising: i) High effort but low performance due to repeating mistakes that have been pointed out before. ii) Low effort but high performance due to luck or the task being easy for the indivi…

Very good point Duncan.
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