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I'm forwarding this from Mark Benz, who can't post to LUGNET from
work. Address any e-mail replies to markdbenz at yahoo.com.
--Bill.
[ Begin forwarded message ]
Hi,
An article of general interest about how LEGO, very sucesfully they
say, used online marketing last Christmas, at:
http://www.emarketer.com/analysis/marketing/cs_lego.html?ref=ed
Includes description of what "they" think an AFOL is: 3) LEGO
enthusiasts 18+: a smaller, targeted audience -- these are adults who
played with LEGO in their youth and now purchase some of the
higher-end LEGO sets priced between $100 and $200
Text of article for the link-impared:
5 March 2002
By David Berkowitz
Premise:
For the 2001 holiday season, LEGO wanted to improve on previous online
efforts. Organic's "Just Imagine" campaign targeted kids, parents and adult
enthusiasts to build a success, brick by brick.
Challenge:
"It was pretty simple, and not so simple," says Organic Director of Online
Media Scott Witt. "You want to use the inertia that this brand has already
created, yet you want to come up with something original.
"A major challenge is to still use the medium correctly to make sure that
not only are you telling a story, but you're also achieving an objective.
It's very easy to be caught in the trap of measuring the success of an
advertising campaign solely by direct conversions. It's not just a direct
response medium. It's not just a branding medium. It can accomplish both
simultaneously. That was a challenge for us, to get out of the mentality of
'view, click, buy,' and get into more of the experiential mentality."
Goals:
There were two central goals, according to Witt:
1) Drive sales of products that were exclusively available at LEGO.com
2) Drive traffic to LEGO.com and build interest in the site
LEGO did not ask for any specific numerical benchmarks, but Organic sought,
at the very least, to surpass results from its previous efforts with LEGO.
Method:
Organic defined three "parallel target audiences," according to Witt:
1) Under age 14: They don't actually buy the goods, but children help
influence purchasing decisions
2) Parents/relatives of children: Gift buyers, and perhaps people who once
played with LEGO
3) LEGO enthusiasts 18+: a smaller, targeted audience -- these are adults
who played with LEGO in their youth and now purchase some of the higher-end
LEGO sets priced between $100 and $200
Organic then selected sites that would attract high concentrations of such
audiences and crafted messages accordingly.
Customized LEGO boutiques were established on About.com and the TV-related
sites Nick.com, Cartoon Network and Fox Kids.
In addition to the boutiques, Organic established a LEGO store in
Disney.com's Main Street Merchants section. Organic also negotiated a
two-week homepage takeover on About.com, a first for About.
"It's part of a larger canopy strategy that we employed, which was really
leveraging the existing licensing relationships that LEGO already had in
place." These companies included Disney, Lucas Arts and Warner Bros.
The campaign ran from the second week of September 2001 through the end of
the year, or roughly 16 weeks.
Results:
For the About.com component, the campaign boosted brand awareness by 12%,
raised purchase intent by 15% and boosted message association by 234%. The
baseline for the metrics was obtained by a brand impact study Organic
performed on the site.
Witt notes that while About.com may be the most visible property, it was the
least targeted of all destinations where LEGO advertised. "This is on the
homepage of the web's 8th-most-trafficked site, so my instinct tells me and
my professional history tells me that had we done another study like this on
some of the more niche properties, it's very possible that the results could
have been even better.
"In terms of the direct response rate, there was a placement on Shockwave
that averaged 8.22% over the course of the 16-week campaign. Our average
direct response rate, including all inventory -- buttons, banners, text
links, everything we had all lumped together -- our average click-through
rate was 1.63% for the entire campaign."
As for any figures on increased sales, LEGO hasn't released the details.
"What we have is some very encouraging response from them on how the
advertising positively affected their business," says Witt.
The bigger picture:
US online ad spending for the games, toys and sporting goods sector will be
nearly 24% higher in 2002 than in 2000, according to Jupiter Media Metrix.
However, ad spending for this category remains on the low end of the scale.
Financial services advertising reigns supreme.
<http://www.emarketer.com/images/chart_gifs/036001-037000/036110.gif>
Lessons learned:
"Really look within the cracks of each individual brand to figure out what
you can leverage in the space," says Witt. "As a professional in interactive
media, it's really important to look at what I call the 'z-axis,' and not
just the x-axis and the y-axis, and to really find those opportunities
because we're really working with a space that is still quite modular and is
still very malleable to the practitioners.
"In that respect, translating that figuratively, LEGO is a very malleable
brand, a very modular brand. It's all about inventing something new out of
pre-existing and pre-fabricated units and really taking those square blocks
and creating something out of them. What we really tried to do is translate
the brand philosophy of LEGO into an online media campaign, which was a
phenomenal exercise for us both mentally and professionally."
The chart in this article can be found in eMarketer's eStat Database.
You can reach Online Editor David Berkowitz, who also produces eMarketer's
interview series, at dberkowitz@emarketer.com. To be the first to find out
when the latest case studies are published, subscribe to the eMarketer
Daily.
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