Lego is planning to incorporate digital elements into its brand experiences after it found that its Christmas activation has delivered a more "inclusive" event.
The toy brand produced the festive hybrid experience "A really cool world", which consists of a pop-up throughout December in Covent Garden and an online 360 walkthrough and treasure hunt.
Marius Lang, head of marketing for UK and Ireland at Lego, told ±±¾©Èü³µpk10 that creating a digital element ensured that no-one was excluded because they were unable make it to a central London destination. The consideration was made as travel may have become more of an obstacle for potential visitors due to the coronavirus pandemic.
"This is one of the things that's coming out of this year," Lang said. "In marketing, we have always known that digital and digital experiences are becoming more and more important.
"And I think what's really important for brands like ours now, we are in the physical space, so we will continue to do physical engagement where we're able to do it in a safe way.
"We'll have building events again once we are able to do that in a safe way, but, that being said, I think you need to give people the choice. You need to be inclusive. So adding these immersive layers on top is something that we were very excited to do for this experience, and it's definitely something we are generating lots of learnings from and, based on these learnings, we will continue to evolve as we roll this into 2021 and beyond."
This inclusive outlook is also something that feeds in to how Lego wants to be perceived, with Lang describing it as an age-, gender- and culturally inclusive brand. He said the festive event would appeal to "whoever has fun, and is joyful about the Lego brand and likes to see what can be created out of bricks".
Lego's Christmas 2019 experience at the Savoy hotel featured 12 installations based on a rewrite of The Twelve Days of Christmas. Visitors to the "Twelve rebuilds of Christmas" were able to join in by creating a festive decoration.
This year, to make the experience Covid secure, while remaining playful, digital elements such as Snapchat lenses can be accessed on-site. The outdoor-exhibition-style pop-up, delivered by The Producers, features a variety of Lego builds that were inspired by the song featured in its "And I think to myself" festive spot, which plays within the experience.Â
Lang added: "We had to shift the plans a couple of times to make sure we do that in a socially responsible way. The way it's now executed is it's free of charge, but you have to pre-book tickets so we can just ensure there are not too many people in the experience at the same time.
"Normally within an experience, we would have had a build table, where kids could build something – that was obviously not the right thing to do this year, so we were looking for other areas we could inject that, digitally, will transport the playfulness of Lego as a brand."