Fun with Your Own Legos

Thursday, 07 May 2009 17:00

The fun in a Lego set is that you can build something interesting with just a few pieces. Then, when you feel like it you can add more pieces or rework everything. No matter how you arrange the blocks, they always fit together.

For a sizable fortune, corporations hire ad agencies to create an assortment of building blocks for an entire year of advertising. Whenever an ad is needed, someone creates it using those building blocks—the Legos—that all fit together.

The Lego set concept is ageless and for many of us, it drives our fashion, meal planning, architectural, even marketing choices. Except with marketing, there's the matter of media and technology which is not so ageless.

In a nutshell, starting with a single piece of marketing collateral, the colors, style, mood, textures, shapes you choose become the building blocks for additional pieces. This is the groundwork for your brand. This is also the emphasis in the Pearson, Stan Sargeant, and Caring Nanny projects. Each marketing piece is created from the building blocks established by the first piece. Lego set marketing is a common sense approach which should save you about half a billion dollars.

Just remember, the most minimal combination of your building blocks can communicate your brand. And as your brand becomes increasingly familiar, so does its effectiveness. The important idea is to start with a simple set of blocks.

Artist Nathan Sawaya works with real Lego blocks. There doesn't seem to be an end to the possibilities. Your blocks will be a discrete set of colors, shapes, textures, themes. But just like Sawaya, when people see your handiwork they'll know it's you.