Lego - A brand wins attention on social media

Are you a building brick toy lover? 
When you see the word or the picture of brick toys, what logo is existing in your mind? Let me guess. It is LEGO, yes? 

Actually, LEGO has become the pronoun of all brick toys. According to LEGO Group's introduction, the name 'LEGO' is an abbreviation of the two Danish words "leg godt", meaning "play well". It's our name and it's our ideal. The history of LEGO can be traced back to 1932, founded by Ole Kirk Kristiansen. At that time, Ole Kirk Kristiansen made wooden toys, and in 1949, the first plastic bricks were produced. In 1980, LEGO established the educational material department based on the belief - LEGO was more than a toy. In 2010s, LEGO created its own IP called LEGO Friends, and with LEGO Movie premiered all over the world, the brand rapidly gained its popularity worldwide. Now, LEGO is not a toy only for children, it is also for adults. 

Up to now, with 834.3K followers on Twitter, 7.3M followers on Instagram, and 14.1M followers on Facebook, LEGO has become very popular on social media. After looking through these three platforms, we can find that the contents are very similar, so what made the numbers of followers so different?

Below is a graph from about the number number of active users for different social networks in 2021. We can see that Facebook is the most popular social media, Instagram ranked the fourth, has a half number of the Facebook, while the number of Twitter is much more less than the two platforms. So we can know the main reason why the numbers of followers can be so different. (Source: https://www.statista.com/）

Here is a graph from the Google trend. We compare LEGO's trend with two brands of brick toys - LOZ and BALODY. It shows that LEGO has highest popularity obviously. Actually, the two brands have almost the same products with LEGO, why can the number be so different? When we look at the posts on social media, we can know the reason. 

As the brand began to face to adult consumers, the requirement on the quality and the precision became higher, like what was said in our book, "Tormod, LEGO's senior director, is aiming at LEGO buyers who think it's a creative building material, not just a toy". To tell all the consumers that they focus on the quality, LEGO posted a record video of the whole process of the production.

And let's see the other two brands' posts. There are only describes of the products, no interactive with the groundswell. 

LEGO interactive a lot with the audiences. Also, LEGO built its own community for consumers. When we look at the tags used during these two months, we can find the LEGO's community, AFOL ranked very high. It contributes a lot for the popularity of this brand. In the community, LEGO fans share their pictures about LEGO, which make the community a place to find people with same interests, and the fans become more and more active as they enjoy it. (Source: https://brand24.com/)

Then, look at the mentions during the recent three months. LEGO has been mentioned for 28529 times, 6793 social media mentions and 9417 positive mentions.

When we look at LOZ, the total mention number is obvious small than LEGO.

When we look at google trends in 12 months, there are two peaks, Nov. 22-28, 2020 and Dec. 20-26, 2020. During these two periods, LEGO posted products related to holidays, which brought a high rate of reading, comment, and like. So, we know that the brand also gain attentions on holidays. And on December 20th, LEGO announced an activity, #LEGOBuildDay, it attracted more attentions.

Now, let's see the SWOT analysis.

Strength: LEGO wins so many attentions on social medias because of the community it built, the high interactive rate. Also, the quality of their contents. The contents the brand posts on social media can always resonant the audience.

I would like to share one video to show that LEGO catches audiences heart not only by the products, but also they really understand the consumers.

Additionally, story telling can be another strength of the brand. They used a vivid story to show audiences that they can build everything with LEGO.

Weakness: According to brand24, we can see there are also 4035 negative mentions, which need to be controlled by the brand. Because the negative comments can be a huge power which can influence the groundswell. As a popular brand, LEGO should be very sensitive to these mentions, listen to the groundswell and talk with the groundswell.

Opportunity: Through the analysis we can see that when there is a holiday or activity. So, the brand can increase and maintain the attention rate by planning more activities.

Threats: As social media marketing becoming popular, the competitors can grow quickly these years, once they build their community and begin to focus on the quality of the posts, it will be a potential threat for LEGO. Therefore, LEGO need to make more innovation and progress on communication and the products.

Do you think LEGO is successful in the communication in the groundswell?