I suppose when the Holidays are coming, toy brands need to start thinking up new advertising campaigns to catch the imagination of children viewers, and through them the attention of their parents with their wallets. LEGO itself has already done theirs, and it’s a hoot to watch, start to finish. The new commercial, running about a minute long, was developed by LEGO Agency, the company’s newly-minted in-house advertising think-tank, and premiered last week on social media. It runs on the tagline that simply refers to the LEGO brick while confidently asserting that This is not a brick; and the punch-line is the colorful SFX-laden sequence proving those words right.
The ad follows no less than five families – parents (and one grandmother) watching their children play with LEGO – and going on a wild symbolic ride through the kids’ wildest imaginations.
We see a mom on the shotgun seat of a Police cruiser driven by her son in a high-speed chase. We see a boy flying an X-Wing with his freaked-out dad stuck in the astromech droid slot. Next we have a girl racing her granny on go-karts along city streets, only to stop and let a father and son pass the cross walk with their pet dragon. And then we have an Asian family running from a giant LEGO-built kaijuu. And all these wacky visuals happen while “The Blue Danube” plays.
That’s a mighty vivid illustration of how LEGO can fire up a child’s imagination, and to look beyond a LEGO piece and simply believe that this is not a brick. As LEGO Agency VP Remi Marcelli tells it, “is a celebration of the endless creative opportunities that the LEGO system in play provides…We hope it will engage and excite fans across the world, reminding us all of the importance of play.”
The LEGO Agency is the newest streamlining of all internal divisions that engage in advertising for The LEGO Group; many of those former departments have been around in the organization for decades, producing local commercials. The LEGO Agency, with 500 staff, is more globally oriented.