Task 2 - Lego Advertisement

Task 2 - Lego Advertisement

When creating our Christmas advertisement, the first thing we need to understand is which type of audience we're targeting, and to know this we need to understand the different types of audiences that are subject to advertisements and it's influences. The demographic you choose is extremely important, if you're creating an advert for a toy brand then you do not by any means want to employ grown people discussing adult topics that exclude your intended target audience for children. The same rule applies for all advertisements, if your selling a newspaper for example, and your target demographic are those in the higher classes with higher paying jobs, then you do not wish to market said newspaper as a gossip column that showcases page 3 girls as it's primary hook.

The demographic we are aiming for is mainly children and parents/carers - although we hope the advert is able to bridge all age gaps, just like the Lego itself. In order to reach out to these different demographics, we need to create an advert that has a message that can be perceived differently by the groups, for example we want the children watching to feel a sense of joy when they watch the advert, we want that joy to stem from their love of toys and playing with products such as Lego, creating a happy, loving connection to the product that the children can hold onto.

The older demographics can also take positive emotions away from this advert, whether it's through memories of Lego, or the fact that a product has been around as long as they have - we can create a sense of nostalgia that can transcend all generations. We also need to remind parents/carers that Lego is a universal toy, by this we mean that any age group or gender can use Lego, and through this the product can bring together families, which is important to emphasise during holiday periods such as Christmas. 

Our advert needs to keep the feeling of Christmas alive, and keep in with the theme of Lego, Lego tend to heavily avoid corporate ads, they don't feature prices or available retailers that sell their product, they create individual adverts that chime into the culture of the country they're selling too, they create adverts inspired by family and imagination, through their creativity we instinctively want to buy Lego over any other brand. We trust in their creative department's work and feel like Lego truly is an extension of our imagination, instead of a distraction until the next big thing. There's a reason why Lego has been around as long as it has, because of the memories.

Our self-created pitch/brief based on Mattel's/Greggs':

Pitch to create video content for Lego's Christmas Advertisement

Description – The Lego Group is one of the world’s largest and industry-leading toy manufacturers; their colourful plastic sets have been entertaining and encouraging creativity within children for over 67 years. With Christmas fast approaching, they're looking to commission a short but memorable video advertisement targeting the parents and guardians their target audience.

GUIDELINES

Budget: £0

Age group: No Age Limit

Demographic Analysis

When creating our Christmas advertisement, the first thing we need to understand is which type of audience we're targeting, and to know this we need to understand the different types of audiences that are subject to advertisements and it's influences. The demographic you choose is extremely important, if you're creating an advert for a toy brand then you do not by any means want to employ grown people discussing adult topics that exclude your intended target audience for children. The same rule applies for all advertisements, if your selling a newspaper for example, and your target demographic are those in the higher classes with higher paying jobs, then you do not wish to market said newspaper as a gossip column that showcases page 3 girls as it's primary hook. I will now talk about the different demographics in detail, and how their particular insight into life can affect their opinions heavily.

Age

There are certain things you can learn about an audience based on age. For instance, if your audience members are first-year college students, you can assume that they have grown up in the post-9/11 era and have limited memory of what life was like before the “war on terror.” If your audience includes people in their forties and fifties, it is likely they remember a time when people feared they would contract the AIDS virus from shaking hands or using a public restroom. People who are in their sixties today came of age during the 1960s, the era of the Vietnam War and a time of social confrontation and experimentation. They also have frames of reference that contribute to the way they think, but it may not be easy to predict which side of the issues they support.

Gender

Gender can define human experience. Clearly, most women have had a different cultural experience from that of men within the same culture. Some women have found themselves excluded from certain careers. Some men have found themselves blamed for the limitations imposed on women. In books such as You Just Don’t Understand and Talking from 9 to 5, linguist Deborah Tannen has written extensively on differences between men’s and women’s communication styles. Tannen explains, “This is not to say that all women and all men, or all boys and girls, behave any one way. Many factors influence our styles, including regional and ethnic backgrounds, family experience and individual personality. But gender is a key factor, and understanding its influence can help clarify what happens when we talk.”

Marriage tends to impose additional roles on both men and women and divorce even more so, especially if there are children. Even if your audience consists of young adults who have not yet made occupational or marital commitments, they are still aware that gender and the choices they make about issues such as careers and relationships will influence their experience as adults.

Culture

In past generations, Americans often used the metaphor of a “melting pot” to symbolize the assimilation of immigrants from various countries and cultures into a unified, harmonious “American people.” Today, we are aware of the limitations in that metaphor, and have largely replaced it with a multiculturalist view that describes the American fabric as a “patchwork” or a “mosaic.” We know that people who immigrate do not abandon their cultures of origin in order to conform to a standard American identity. In fact, cultural continuity is now viewed as a healthy source of identity.

We also know that subcultures and cocultures exist within and alongside larger cultural groups. For example, while we are aware that Native American people do not all embrace the same values, beliefs, and customs as mainstream white Americans, we also know that members of the Navajo nation have different values, beliefs, and customs from those of members of the Sioux or the Seneca. We know that African American people in urban centres like Detroit and Boston do not share the same cultural experiences as those living in rural Mississippi. Similarly, white Americans in San Francisco may be culturally rooted in the narrative of distant ancestors from Scotland, Italy, or Sweden or in the experience of having emigrated much more recently from Australia, Croatia, or Poland.

Not all cultural membership is visibly obvious. For example, people in German American and Italian American families have widely different sets of values and practices, yet others may not be able to differentiate members of these groups. Differences are what make each group interesting and are important sources of knowledge, perspectives, and creativity.

Religion

There is wide variability in religion as well. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found in a nationwide survey that 84 percent of Americans identify with at least one of a dozen major religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and others. Within Christianity alone, there are half a dozen categories including Roman Catholic, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, Orthodox (Greek and Russian), and a variety of Protestant denominations. Another 6 percent said they were unaffiliated but religious, meaning that only one American in ten is atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular.” 

Even within a given denomination, a great deal of diversity can be found. For instance, among Roman Catholics alone, there are people who are devoutly religious, people who self-identify as Catholic but do not attend mass or engage in other religious practices, and others who faithfully make confession and attend mass but who openly question Papal doctrine on various issues. Catholicism among immigrants from the Caribbean and Brazil is often blended with indigenous religion or with religion imported from the west coast of Africa. It is very different from Catholicism in the Vatican.

The dimensions of diversity in the religion demographic are almost endless, and they are not limited by denomination. Imagine conducting an audience analysis of people belonging to an individual congregation rather than a denomination: even there, you will most likely find a multitude of variations that involve how one was brought up, adoption of a faith system as an adult, how strictly one observes religious practices, and so on.

Yet, even with these multiple facets, religion is still a meaningful demographic lens. It can be an indicator of probable patterns in family relationships, family size, and moral attitudes.

Group Membership

In your classroom audience alone, there will be students from a variety of academic majors. Every major has its own set of values, goals, principles, and codes of ethics. A political science student preparing for law school might seem to have little in common with a student of music therapy, for instance. In addition, there are other group memberships that influence how audience members understand the world. Fraternities and sororities, sports teams, campus organizations, political parties, volunteerism, and cultural communities all provide people with ways of understanding the world as it is and as we think it should be.

Because public speaking audiences are very often members of one group or another, group membership is a useful and often easy to access facet of audience analysis. The more you know about the associations of your audience members, the better prepared you will be to tailor your speech to their interests, expectations, and needs.

Education

Education is expensive, and people pursue education for many reasons. Some people seek to become educated, while others seek to earn professional credentials. Both are important motivations. If you know the education levels attained by members of your audience, you might not know their motivations, but you will know to what extent they could somehow afford the money for an education, afford the time to get an education, and survive educational demands successfully.

The kind of education is also important. For instance, an airplane mechanic undergoes a very different kind of education and training from that of an accountant or a software engineer. This means that not only the attained level of education but also the particular field is important in your understanding of your audience.

Occupation

People choose occupations for reasons of motivation and interest, but their occupations also influence their perceptions and their interests. There are many misconceptions about most occupations. For instance, many people believe that teachers work an eight-hour day and have summers off. When you ask teachers, however, you might be surprised to find out that they take work home with them for evenings and weekends, and during the summer, they may teach summer school as well as taking courses in order to keep up with new developments in their fields. But even if you don’t know those things, you would still know that teachers have had rigorous generalized and specialized qualifying education, that they have a complex set of responsibilities in the classroom and the institution, and that, to some extent, they have chosen a relatively low-paying occupation over such fields as law, advertising, media, fine and performing arts, or medicine. If your audience includes doctors and nurses, you know that you are speaking to people with differing but important philosophies of health and illness. Learning about those occupational realities is important in

Physcographics

Physcographics is a way of analysing an audience via behaviour patterns and personality traits of it's members. It deals with attitudes, interests, personality, values, opinions and lifestyle. Psychographics, for this reason, are incredibly valuable for marketing, but they also have use cases in opinion research, prediction, and social research in a broad sense.

Essentially, if you know how people choose and compare products in your category, you know how to structure and prioritize content. If you know their deepest held beliefs, you can align your marketing messaging more closely. If you know what they don’t care about, you can dismiss it and cut it from your site. If you know what they read, you know where to reach them..

Psychographics tell you “why” people buy. They help you build robust user personas. They help you craft the right message as well as put it in the right place. They’re less objective and clean, but for a marketer, they are extremely useful.


The main types of psychographics are IAO’s – interests, activities, and opinions.


Activities are what people do. Things like skiing, reading, fishing, weightlifting – the list is endless. You can use trends in activity psychographics to better target the customer via ads, write better content that uses metaphors and references from their activities, or approach events and even selling in a more catered way.

Interests are inclinations and affinities. Through research I have determined that the easiest way to find out what people are currently talking about is through Google Analytics. Analytics is a "freemium" service offered by Google that tracks website traffic and monitors trends in order to give businesses (and those just genuinely curious) an insight into the minds of everyday internet users. Information like this can be used to tailor advertisements to fall in line with trends already attracting your target audience, giving the businesses the best opportunity possible when it comes to marketing correctly.






Opinions. Everyone has one. When people have similar opinions, they tend to form groups, thereby creating a market in which specific brands can tap into. The best example of businesses using specific mind-sets as a market are The North Face and Patagonia.
The North face sell premium outdoor wear which is undisputedly the best out there on the market. They sell the idea of being adventurous.
Most people who wear The North Face or Patagonia tend to wear them in everyday life, perhaps just to walk the dog or go to the shops - but the idea of having these brands creates a sense of adventure, the brands separate you from your "normal" life.
The premium outdoor wear targets those who love the idea of trekking across dense forests or mountains, they target those who desire more from the product than what life currently gives them.

The opening of the first North Face shop in San Francisco, 1966. Photograph: Suki HIll / The North Face

Analysis of Advertising in the Christmas Market

Merry Capitalism

 Every year Christmas seems to start earlier. No sooner are the Halloween costumes taken down from the displays than the fake plastic trees, chocolate calendars and snow-in-a-can decorations come out. Whilst Christmas is meant to be a ‘magical time’ it can often be incredibly stressful for many, and often sees family bust ups and rows as everyone is forced together to have a good time.
The annual ritual of Christmas is an important one for capitalism – it is usually a highly profitable time for retail. People spend a lot at Christmas, usually much more than they can afford, not just on presents but on food and alcohol as well as on transport to and from family homes.


Spend, spend, spend!

 Many people on the left are critical of what they see as a consumerist culture which has left us apathetic and uncritical. Indeed, the idea that we have been co-opted into the capitalist system through the mass media or “mindless consumerism” is a popular one. The idea started with people like Daniel Bell and Theodor Adorno in the 1950s and 60s who argued that economic growth was creating a ‘post-political’ society where class contradictions and struggles were diminishing. It was a period of unprecedented economic growth, and the start of the idea that each generation would be better off than the last.
But all of the consumerist culture that we live in today is very much a product of the rising wages after the war and cheap consumer credit which the bosses used under globalisation to give their system a massive boost. Falling prices, and cheap credit encouraged consumer spending, allowing millions to ‘buy into’ the system, and feel that they had a stake in capitalism.
This disappointment, the gap between what is promised and what is possible for most people opens up a space, one that can become radicalised if it is linked to an anti-capitalist critique – rather than just a feeling of apathy towards political action.


Christmas after capitalism

 If you cut through the consumerist alienation and phony good will around Christmas time, there is a real sense of living in a world where the usual traumas of work and social alienation are gone – where we feel goodwill and a merry time together. It is not just the Christian message which lies, increasingly obscured, behind the Disneyfied season which we experience  that provides the sense of compassion. We lavish each other with presents and gifts. Everyone has thought ‘why can’t everyday be Christmas?’ at some point in their lives – and why shouldn’t it be?
The idea of goodwill on earth and peace to everyone, those feel-good movies that they show on TV, the classic Dickens Christmas Tale of Scrooge and his journey from horrible, gnarled old capitalist to a lovable philanthropic gent, are all part of an ideological message about human community, forgiveness and tolerance. Normally someone might shout at that guy for cutting in front of them in traffic or ignore homeless people – but in December… well everything is just different. Maybe your boss even lets you finish work a few hours early so you can spend more time with your family.
It tacitly acknowledges that the rest of the year we are miserable, alienated and angry with each other – victims of an increasingly stressful work life which grinds us down. People have to ask themselves, why should we be nice to each other only at Christmas?
Christmas is a time of mixed emotions – it can be exhilarating and frustrating, a high point of the year and a low point. As part of the struggle for human emancipation we have to be critical of the way these holidays are manipulated by capitalists for their own benefit and reinforce a particular way of life.

Lego: The Facts

Architects drew their roots from this, while construction workers found a way to build upon their childhood dreams. Both of these careers can be dreamed of by children around the world when they pick up any amount of Lego blocks and let their imagination run wild. Based in Denmark, the Lego brand has found its way into millions of homes throughout the world after being created by a carpenter in the early 1930’s.

Lego's most recent blockbuster hit is "The Lego Batman" movie (2017) following on from their previous hit "The Lego Movie" (2014). Their follow up film "The Lego Ninjago Movie" (2017) wasn't as critically or commercially successful as it's predecessors and flew relatively low under the box office radar.

(Lego's net worth as of $14.6 Billion (Most likely more as of Q1 2018, most reliable sources found are at least 1-2 years old)

I can only imagine this is the face of LEGO execs

Legos are plastic building blocks that come in a variety of shapes, colours and sizes. These blocks all have circular holes that protrude from the surface of the block, allowing aspiring plastic construction men to interlock the pieces to build designs. Since the beginning of the Lego brand, an aspiring inventor can recreate famous architecture and even people. After achieving worldwide fame, such sets as the Star Wars Millennium Falcon, Taj Mahal and whole cities have been built literally brick by brick.


As popularity for these plastic building blocks was gained throughout the world, cheaper knock off brands have also been created. This feat has not stopped the Lego Corporation as they have also expanded their brand into movies, a theme park and board games. They have also become one of the largest toy distribution companies in the entire world. Legos have been used as a hands on way of teaching students throughout drafting and design courses around the nation, proving that they can be used at a variety of ages for fun and learning.


Most childhoods would not be complete without having at building at least one car, house or tower from Lego blocks. Legos are a way for the creative mind to begin from a young age, as students have to develop and build the toy that they want to play with. These bricks although very durable to build elaborate creations, are easily removable making them a prime toy throughout childhood development. Some pieces are very tiny so it is in the best interest of the adult supervisor to ensure that children do not put these small bricks anywhere near their mouth.


If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the toy industry has been throwing laurels at Lego’s feet since a crucial patent expired in 1983. Lego has argued in court, usually without success, that the “stud-and-tube” system of bricks constitutes a trademark, not just a patent. It has sued several companies, including the now-defunct toy maker Tyco Industries, Canada-based Mega Brands, and the Chinese company Tianjin Coko over its CoCo line (which Lego won). Such companies have even played off Lego’s popularity in their marketing, with Tyco ending every ad with the line “They work with Lego, too!” and Mega Brands’ Mega Bloks emphasizing that its bricks are “compatible with leading brands including Lego.” But among collectors and children alike, there is consensus: Lego bricks are just better made.

LEGO comes from the Danish word leg godt. Leg godt means “play well” in Danish and LEGO is made from the first two letters of each word.

LEGO is 83 years old. The LEGO Group began in 1932 in Billund, Denmark and was founded by Ole Kirk Christiansen.

The company is 83 years old, but the interlocking LEGO blocks were manufactured from 1949. This makes the LEGO blocks we all know and love 66 years old.

Ole Kirk Christiansen was a carpenter. He lost his business and began to make toys out of his leftover wood. He was inspired to construct a small wooden duck toy for his children and when they loved it he put them into production to sell.

lego.wikia.com

• LEGO was originally called “Automatic Binding Bricks”. LEGO were not actually the first company to market the bricks. They modified and improved the original Kiddicraft bricks to create their own.

• The LEGO Group eventually purchased the rights to the Kiddicraft block in 1981.

• In 1958, the LEGO brick with the familiar tubes inside and studs on was patented. This was done on 28 January, 1958 and all 2 x 4 LEGO bricks  since then have been produced to the exact measurements of this patent.

• A LEGO brick from 1958 would interlock with a brick from 2015. The patent introduced what is called a “universal system” so that each piece is compatible with all other pieces, regardless of the year or set it belongs to.

• LEGO sued a Chinese company who made “Coko bricks” in 2002. These blocks were very similar to LEGO bricks and Coko were forced to cease production and issue a formal apology as well.

• LEGO DUPLO bricks are eight times the size of original LEGO bricks. Because of the universal system they will still connect together.

• The LEGO minifigure, also known as “minifig” or just “fig” was first introduced in 1978. The early figures before this, in 1975, had no facial features, gender, arms, or moveable legs.

• Each LEGO minifigure is exactly four bricks high without a hat.

• Since the first minifigure in 1978 more than 4 billion have been made. This makes LEGO them the world’s largest population group (if they were alive)

• As of 2013, over 560 billion LEGO parts have been produced. On average, that is 86 LEGO bricks for every single person on the earth.

• LEGO is the world’s largest producer of rubber wheels. They produce more than Bridgestone, Goodyear and all other car tyre manufacturers.

• The tallest LEGO tower was 94 feet high and used 465,000 bricks. The tower was a pirate ship mast with a “treasure” made of gold, yellow and clear bricks on top and was built at LEGOLAND in California.

A life size house made from 3.3 million LEGO bricks.

• • In 2009, British TV presenter James May built a life size house out of LEGO. It used 3.3 million bricks and it included a working toilet, a shower and a bed – which was very uncomfortable.
  
  
  
  • In 2012, 45.7 billion LEGO bricks were produced. This actually works out to be a rate of 5.2 million LEGO bricks per hour.
  
  
  
  • 18 out of every million LEGO pieces fail to meet the company standard. This is because the factory process is so streamlined and efficient.
  
  
  
  • If you laid all of the LEGO bricks sold in 2012 end-to-end, they would stretch around the world more than 18 times.
  
  
  
  • Seven LEGO sets are sold every second.  By the time you have read this fact, dozens of LEGO sets have been sold around the world.
  
  
  
  • You could reach the moon with a column of around 40 billion LEGO bricks. The column would be over 384,400 km tall.
  
  
  
  • There are actually enough LEGO bricks to stack from the Earth to the moon – ten times.
  
  
  
  • Six eight-stud LEGO bricks can be combined in over 915 million different ways. Two bricks can be combined 24 different ways, and three bricks 1,060 ways.

The Taj Mahal LEGO Set
LEGO Group

• The largest commercial LEGO set is the Taj Mahal set. It has 5,922 individual pieces.

• There are no LEGO sets with a war or military theme. This is because LEGO creator Ole Kirk Christiansen didn’t want to make war seem appealing to children.

• In 2011, astronauts took LEGO to space. It was caused the “LEGO Bricks in Space” program and 13 LEGO sets were taken to the International Space Station to see how they react in microgravity.

• In 2000, LEGO was named “Toy of the Century” by the British Association of Toy Retailers. LEGO beat both the common teddy bear and the Barbie doll.

• There are artists who sculpt their work exclusively using LEGO. A New York based artist called Nathan Sawaya was the first artist to ever take LEGO into the art world. He is shown in museums throughout America and has a touring exhibition called “The Art Of The Brick.”

• In 2014, the LEGO Group became the world’s largest toy company. They are now larger than Mattel.

From Research to Advert

Lego is a brand that has resonated with families across generations and remains as one of the best selling products of all time. Christmas is for families, and so is Lego - choosing Lego as our advertisement for this unit makes complete sense. We needed something that would spread the message of Christmas, something that would remind the viewers about the true meaning of the holiday. Lego doesn't need adverts, but they choose to advertise to remind people the toy that brought them all together. After extensive research into the brand involving trips to toy retailers, we came to the conclusion that Lego is catered for everybody, therefore this advert will reach the widest demographic possible if done properly. Our advert needs to keep the feeling of Christmas alive, and keep in with the theme of Lego, Lego tend to heavily avoid corporate ads, they don't feature prices or available retailers that sell their product, they create individual adverts that chime into the culture of the country they're selling too, they create adverts inspired by family and imagination, through their creativity we instinctively want to buy Lego over any other brand. We trust in their creative department's work and feel like Lego truly is an extension of our imagination, instead of a distraction until the next big thing. There's a reason why Lego has been around as long as it has, because of the memories. The main hook for this ad is that it doesn't feel corporate, it's a heart-warming promotion of a toy that has remained the same since it's inception.
We instantly knew that their would be no specific target in terms of gender due to our research conducted at the toy stores, we learned that Lego doesn't tend to separate genders for their products, instead deciding to remain inclusive for everybody.

Picking Lego isn't easy, as made clear by the information provided, the brand has been around for a very long time and created a legacy alongside it - which means our advert has to attain a very high standard to make itself recognisable as a Lego commissioned advertisement. The information provided proves that Lego prides itself on being a family orientated brand, so the obvious route for this advert is family - more specifically parent and child. We need to use the 1-99 age rating to our advantage, this isn't just a marketing ploy by Lego, it holds true to their product,  it's meant to be enjoyed by everyone therefore Lego produce advertisements that speak to all ages, if our advert does not induce this same reaction, then we simply haven't achieved our goal.
We need to avoid the mistake of "selling" the product - this product is already sold in the hearts of millions, we need to remind people why they should always trust in Lego, we need to remove the anti-consumer spin a lot of adverts take and think about the legacy that Lego hold true, yes they're are still accompany that needs to make money, but their money is made through customers who trust in the brand and it's approach to consumerism.