TL;DR: The Rebuild The World campaign harnesses the power of masterful visual storytelling to inspire, empower, and engage parents and children everywhere. It challenges audiences to re-imagine the world without constraints, deconstructing the old where needed and creating a better future through playful cooperation and boundless creativity.
So What: LEGO’s Rebuild the World campaign started in 2019 and has since engaged millions of children and adults worldwide. Focusing on creative problem-solving, it educates, engages, and sparks action in alignment with LEGO’s purpose and values. It offers an example of successful marketing communication that provides value beyond promotion.
LEGO’s “Rebuild the World” campaign celebrates children’s endless creativity through visual storytelling, education, and interactive elements. Launched in 2019, “Rebuild The World” sought to empower future adults to use imagination and play to discover diverse solutions to real-world problems.
By encouraging children’s unfettered use of imagination and creativity, Rebuild the World demolishes taboos and challenges preconceptions, freeing the spirit to test and redefine the limits of what’s possible. Here’s what marketers can learn.
The Campaign
The campaign’s main video features a knight who wants to cross a body of water to visit his bear friend on the other side. The townsfolk try to help the protagonist in various (comical) ways, but their feats of creativity fall short. Eventually, they pool their ideas and resources to build a bridge that allows the knight to cross the divide and reunite with his friend.
The core message positions LEGO as the enabler of creativity through play. By rebuilding the world, children and adults develop skills, set their imaginations free, and solve problems cooperatively. At the same time, LEGO helps people overcome ingrained attitudes, removing hurdles from the path of creativity.
Another 2020 video focuses on out-of-the-box thinking and unconventional solutions. It shows a white rabbit being chased by a hunter in a LEGO world with colored bricks, LEGO people, and dinosaurs.
LEGO is a $10 billion global brand that continues to grow faster than the broader toy market, helped in part by this campaign. So, why does the campaign work?
Using Emotion and Visuals to Spark Imagination
LEGO’s brand of visual storytelling is a carefully crafted marketing language that works through several different communication approaches:
- Grabbing Visual Attention. Visual content is easier to digest than text. There’s a reason millions of children and adults worldwide are hopelessly hooked on consuming short video content.
- Simplifying Communication. It eschews verbal rhetoric in favor of a global reach. Regardless of your language, LEGO’s Rebuild the World videos manage to inspire, empower, and encourage within seconds. They deliver complex communication in a simple, visually appealing package.
- Engaging Emotions and Wonder. Vivid visuals allow video creators to establish quick emotional connections with audiences, and we base many of our decisions on emotional responses.
- Creating Ethos Through Quality. The quality visuals of the videos convey professionalism and a steadfast commitment to quality, building trust and a positive perception of the content.
- Supports Social Media Awareness. People are more willing to share visual content than text. Funny, relatable, and inspirational visual content is the most likely to go viral.
Who knew a lawn mower could plant flowers?
The Rebuild the World campaign is inspirational and aligned with LEGO’s brand values. Its lighthearted, humorous approach encourages audience participation, directly addressing the brand’s global fan base while strengthening its identity.
Marketer’s Takeaway
LEGO’s Rebuild the World campaign proves that visual storytelling can create a compelling, powerful, and universally intelligible rhetoric. It reaches across cultural divides seemingly effortlessly, strengthening LEGO’s identity and inspiring the audience in lockstep with the purpose and values of the organization.
Here’s what you can take away, as a marketer, from LEGO’s visual storytelling prowess:
- Use Engaging Narratives. Stories built around universally positive values like creativity, cooperation, and successful problem-solving always resonate with the public. Evoking an emotion like nostalgia or joy makes visual storytelling truly engaging.
- Power Inclusive Messaging. LEGO’s messaging is as consistent as it is inclusive. Creativity, play, cooperation, and education are all universally valued concepts.
- Use Humor and Wit. Humor relaxes audiences, priming viewers for emotional connections while enhancing the viewing experience. It creates subconscious positive associations with the brand.
- Maintain Consistency. The Rebuild the World campaign aligns perfectly with LEGO’s values. Consistent alignment conveys authenticity and builds trust with the audience.
- Inspirational communication provides extra value. Ideal marketing communication provides value beyond promotion. LEGO’s videos seek to inspire, empower, and educate, positioning the organization as a thought leader keen on building connections with its potential clients.
LEGO’s Rebuild the World campaign provides good examples of clear, concise, and universally consistent communication through visual storytelling.
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