From its humble beginnings selling wooden toys in 1932 [3], LEGO has become the largest toy manufacturer in the world by sales [2].
It’s an iconic brand that has spawned not just toys but amusement parks, movies, and video games. It operates over 900 stores globally with a presence in more than 130 countries [3].
But its 90-year history hasn’t all been plain sailing. In 1998 it posted its first-ever loss. By 2004 it was on the verge of bankruptcy - sales were down 30% and it had debts of over $800m. What followed has been described as the greatest turnaround in corporate history [4].
A key part of its revival came from its embrace of community. In this deep dive, we explore the rocky path that has seen community help LEGO co-create new products, drive awareness, and revive its fortunes through sustainable double-digit growth.
✔️ Origin Story: How LEGO and its community programs got started.
✔️ LEGO's Mindstorms Moment: How hacking led it to reconsider its relationship with customers.
✔️ Co-creation and Connection: The programs that enable community growth.
✔️ Return on Community: The value it creates for members and derives for its own business.
This is a story about a passionate community with huge business impact - let’s get into it 🧱
The name LEGO was coined in 1934 [3], but it wasn’t until 1958 that the iconic stud-and-tube coupling bricks as we know them were developed [5]. These caught on and the company grew steadily until the 1990s. However, it then began to diversify and took big risks investing in building video games [3], opening additional theme parks, and entering into expensive licensing agreements. It even started to change the LEGO bricks themselves, joining them together into sections to make building simpler and quicker [6]. These developments didn’t pay off and they lost money for the first time in 1998. By 2004 the company was in crisis. They posted their worst-ever results - a $238M loss [6]. Had the company not been owned by a wealthy private family, it would have been technically insolvent [7].
Such a downturn in fortunes has many contributing factors, but a big one was “We just didn't know our customers anymore,” says Jake McKee, former LEGO Global Community Relations Specialist. “The culture was so closed off,” Jakes explains. Instead of talking to customers, they would instead “Go to the big three retailers in the US that sell Lego products: Toys R Us, Walmart, Target, and say, ‘Okay, so what do you want us to make this year?’” [8]. In part, this attitude resulted from several lawsuits claiming ‘stolen’ ideas. In response, it put in place a policy of not accepting unsolicited ideas, but over time this morphed into ignoring all customer input [8, 10].
They needed to make big changes and announced Jørgen Vig Knudstorp as the first CEO from outside the Kirk Kristiansen family [9]. They ditched its software division, sold off its controlling share in its theme parks, and cut staff. It set out to halve development times and it reduced product lines from 12,000 to 7,000 [6].
“We kind of forgot that the brick is our core,” says Jan Beyer, then Community Development Manager at LEGO [11]. It would be listening to its community that would help put the business back on course. Although, this course correction was several years in the making.
Back in 1998, LEGO released Mindstorms, a kit that enabled you to create programmable robots based on LEGO bricks [12]. It was an instant hit, selling 100,000 units in less than 3 months [13]. There was just one problem - it was mostly being bought by adults, not children.
“We actually put postcards in the Mindstorms sets for people to return,” recalls Tormod Askildsen. Tormod worked at LEGO for 39 years in a variety of roles but was actively involved with the community from 2000 onwards. “When those started coming in, in early ‘99, we could see that half the people who bought the set were not in our target group” [13]. It was marketed to kids [12], but at one point, adults made up 70% of people buying it [5]. This was awkward because “Before the late 1990s, the company didn’t think their adult fans had value,” explains Paal Smith-Meyer, former Head of New Business Group at LEGO. “Leadership actually thought [adults] were detracting from the brand” [5]. Worse still, within just a few weeks of its release, a Stanford graduate student named Kekoa Proudfoot reverse-engineered the RCX brick, the brains behind the robot. He shared all his findings online [6], unleashing a wave of new developments among the adult fan community, from soda machines to blackjack dealers [12].
True to LEGO’s closed-off culture, its first reaction was negative [12]. Its legal team was eager to protect its IP [6]. They even tracked down several of the people involved and invited them to meet at an MIT event called MindFest [13]. “Our plan was to explain to them why they could not do that. We had this picture in our minds of these ‘evil hackers’ doing everything in self-interest… and then we met them,” says Tormod. “They were the most awesome people—nice, polite… and they loved their LEGO hobby” [12].
LEGO’s stance began to change. They concluded that stifling creativity was counter to its values of encouraging exploration. Plus, the hackers were helping to make its product better and more exciting. They decided to let such modifications flourish and added a "right to hack" item to its software license [6].
Lengthy internal discussions followed, and LEGO began to see that this community around its products added something interesting and they wanted to learn more [12]. In December 1999, Brad Justus, Senior VP LEGO Direct, published a post titled “Introducing LEGO Direct” on LUGNET. LUGNET or Lego Users Group Network was a fan-created Usenet that started in the late 1990s and became a key hub for the international adult LEGO fan community [14]. The message said [14]:
“With this missive, the LEGO Company asks to open a dialogue with you, our consumers… We want to have the best possible relationships with all of you who want to have a relationship with us.”
The ice was broken. Brad and other LEGO employees began to join in LUGNET discussions, participating once per week [14]. This was a real inflection point in the company’s history and the way it engaged with its customers, especially adult fans of LEGO (known as AFOLs within the LEGO community) [15]. Change wasn’t quick but a small group of people were now embracing and actively working with its customer community.
By the time its 2004 crisis came about, changing the way LEGO worked with its customers became a key part of Jørgen’s “Shared Vision” strategy, which had three key phases [16]:
In August 2005, Jørgen attended a fan convention and saw for himself the passion and value of its community. “Jørgen spent the entire weekend in meetings with different groups… he had really deep conversations with them, he really got an understanding,” recalls Tormod [17].
“We think innovation will come from a dialogue with the community,” Jørgen said when he addressed the convention crowd [18].
And it did. What followed was double-digit growth each year [19]. Between 2008 and 2010 its profits quadrupled, growing faster than Apple’s [4], and surpassing $1 Billion in U.S. sales for the first time [7]. Last year, revenue was up 17% to over $9B [1]. Moreover, the company's net promoter score (NPS) is now 77 - one of the highest of any company [20].
“LEGO's outsized success today is because of the community,” says Tim Courtney, former Community and Experience Manager at LEGO. “It's because of the adult fans. It's because of embracing them” [15]. There’s now an incredible community around LEGO. But Jørgen admits that for a long time “We didn’t nurture it well. Those were the things we started addressing, and that led us on an incredible journey of very strong growth for more than a decade” [22].
It may have taken a nine-figure loss to convince management to rethink its customer relationship, but it was now back on track. Let’s take a look at some of the many community programs LEGO has experimented with and utilized in the years since.
Mindstorms features again in some of its early work with community members. They decided to work on a new version of the product and form a user panel to help refine its development. They enlisted four community members to help, which they found by going through user groups and online forums [6]. Attitudes to including community members were still evolving internally, and the product team was questioning how much value they could add. But over time those attitudes changed. “We would ask them about a planned feature," says Søren Lund, Community Development Director at LEGO from 2001-2004, who headed up the Mindstorms project. “Within half an hour, there would be a four-page email on it” [6]. They exchanged countless emails with the LEGO team, providing input on sensors, ports, and firmware, becoming de facto LEGO employees along the way [6]. “They were giving us feedback we never even thought of,” recalls Jake [21]. As the project progressed they added more people to the panel. First 10, then later in another batch, 100. They didn’t have the same access as the first four, but they were able to buy a pre-release version and help with testing it [6].
It became clear to LEGO execs that the Mindstorms NXT product was better for the user panel’s input. This was confirmed by its massive success upon release. Four years after its release, it was still selling 40,000 units a year with no advertising and it has since become one of LEGO’s all-time best-selling products [6]. What’s more, the wider fan community knew they had sought input from well-respected members within the community, so its release didn’t result in the blowback from fans it had feared:
“There wasn’t an entire community of people losing their minds saying, why did you do this? Why did you make this change? They went, oh, God, if these guys were involved, it must be cool,” says Jake [21].
For their involvement, the four members received a few LEGO crane sets and Mindstorms NXT prototypes. Given that they had to pay for their own airfares to Denmark for a meeting with the company, there was no financial upside. But this didn’t matter to them, they were just happy to have been involved: ’They actually want our opinion?’ It doesn’t get much better than that,” recalls Steve Hassenplug, one of the panel members [6].
Lego Ideas
Perhaps the epitome of LEGO’s co-creation efforts is LEGO Ideas. LEGO Ideas is a crowdsourcing and open innovation program where community members can create and submit ideas for new LEGO sets [36]. It’s a totally fan-inspired product line, and each year LEGO releases around 4 products that have come about through the LEGO Ideas site [15].
The program started life as LEGO Cuusoo in 2008 [37]. Cuusoo is a Japanese company that LEGO partnered with on the pilot of the program and it would stay in beta for several years. The program was met with skepticism on both sides. Fans were still building trust with the company and staff saw it as disruptive and were worried about competing for limited production capacity [15]. “They launched it in Japan and Japanese-only because they had no idea what was going to happen,” explains Tim. “This could go gangbusters or it could totally flop” [15]. In reality, it didn’t quite do either, but slowly but surely it found its footing.
To be considered for production an idea has to reach a 10,000 vote threshold [38]. This is the genius of the program. To get those votes, fans needed to share and promote it, not just getting friends and family to vote, but finding a real audience for it [39]. That not only raises awareness for LEGO but de-risks putting the idea into production. When an idea is selected, reviewed, and produced, the creator gets 10 copies of the product and 1% of the net sales [37].
In 2011, the first product was released for the Japanese market - a deep-sea submarine called Shinkai 6500 [9]. However, it was the first product intended for the global market that turned this concept into a hit [15]. That first product was a Minecraft set, which got 10,000 votes in under 48 hours, racked up 30,000 “likes” on the LEGO Facebook page, and was tweeted about more than 4,000 times [18].
The project became known as LEGO Ideas in 2014 when the LEGO Group formally took it over from Cuusoo. Subsequent creations include the Back to the Future DeLorean, the Ghostbusters car, and the Ladies of NASA set [15]. 20,000 users came across from the Japanese site and their use began to drop. Then all of a sudden it was featured on Conan O'Brien, which brought down the service [15]. It has since added millions of members [15] to the Chaordix-based site [37].
The program could have been some gimmick, or ideas restricted to a narrow list of things. But it wasn’t. If an accepted idea includes third-party IP, for a game, TV show, or movie, then LEGO will go and try to secure the license to make it happen [36]. The LEGO Ideas site has garnered tons of press and online coverage over the years. All around the world, Ideas submissions have appeared on community sites and social media platforms, and they have featured on national TV and press. Even for ideas that don’t make it into production, authentic marketing stories come out of it. These stories are much more valuable than paid advertising. It also drives revenue for LEGO, too. Of the 23 sets LEGO produced in a 5-year period, 90% sold out in their first release [36].
At the heart of this virality is the “Intersection of a passion for LEGO and a passion for another idea,” says Jake. “That's just the essence of what LEGO Ideas is” - it’s a way of connecting disparate communities around LEGO and TV shows, movies, etc. - raising awareness of both [36].
From a community management perspective, though, LEGO Ideas is a hard thing to manage. After all, the most likely outcome is rejection.
They launched with a simple set of documentation detailing what could and couldn’t be submitted [36], being deliberately open-ended to encourage creativity [15]. “The submission guidelines at the time were like five or six bullet points, two or three sentences, not very clear... It was kind of the wild west in terms of what people were submitting,” says Jake. Over time, they added a lot more structure, using community feedback to iterate. “It was about a year and a half of firefighting, to be brutally honest,” says Tim. “Clarifying the rules of engagement” and being clear about “the scope of what people could submit to the site” [15]. Being open may still have been the right move, but as they soon learned, “The only thing that comes from ambiguity is negativity,” says Jake. “When people have a blank, they fill it with bad thoughts. And so if you can cut through that, then you're more likely to maintain that relationship” [36].
It takes a lot of effort to model, demo, take pictures of, and add descriptions for an entry. Then you need to promote it and build momentum around the idea. Most submissions don’t get 10,000 votes, making that threshold is a big achievement in itself. The team at LEGO celebrates those who make it into the 10K Club with an interview, profiling them on their site [36]:
“We let them send their photos in of them with their model. Tell us their LEGO story. Tell us the story about how this idea came to be and because you've been successful on the platform, share your advice.”
For those making it into the 10K Club, all you're guaranteed is that your submission will be reviewed, not made. Around 10 people make it into each review batch, 3 times a year. Things go quiet while the idea is in review, which can take several months. A cross-functional team including design, procurement, legal, licensing, community, and PR all provide input to make a decision [19].
Yet the low odds of success have not put people off. By 2020, the site had received 28,000 submissions [36].
For the lucky few who end up having their idea produced, not only do they get the sets and the 1% revenue share, but they also do an in-store signing event. “We would set up the table with the banner and the poster… We promote it online through our social media…. several hundred people would show up,” says Tim. “They would be a celebrity for the day. They would get to sit there and sign boxes and take photos with people” [15].
A later offshoot of the LEGO Ideas program was the AFOL Designer Program - a scheme from the company designed to offer very limited runs of sets that didn’t pass the LEGO Ideas review process [51]. It was set up in 2018 to celebrate 60 years of the LEGO brick and to acknowledge the creativity of the AFOL community [52]. They received 443 entries and went on to produce 13 sets, which went through a fast-tracked review process that they set up in person, inviting fan media sites to cover it [53]. It wasn’t just for the community good, though, it made money too. 40 days was allocated for the sets to be ordered, but they sold out in hours, with some sets going in minutes [51] and selling some 50,000 sets [53].
LEGO Ideas has been a hugely successful program. It has not only helped LEGO tap into a vast pool of creativity and drive awareness but also reduced product development times by up to 4 times [37].
Community-created innovations have now become a crucial part of LEGO’s innovation engine [12]. Creations by members of its customer community have been the inspiration for multiple product developments [18]. For example, in 2005, LEGO began the development of LEGO Factory, a program that enabled users to design, upload, and purchase their own unique LEGO creations [9]. This takes its roots from LDraw, an open source software program that allows users to create virtual LEGO models and scenes [12]. Søren formed a user panel to inform the development of Factory, “Our intention was to make it as much of a community project as possible,” he says. A member set up a secure forum where users could share their designs. That design process resulted in three micro-scale sets being produced: the Lego Factory Amusement Park set, the Lego Factory Airport set, and the Lego Factory Skyline set. The initiative didn’t last as it didn’t prove to be a financial success [19], but “I was overwhelmed by the quality,” says Søren. This “sent shock waves through our development organization” [18].
LEGO Mosaic was based on the fan-created Pixelego software, which translated pixelated photos into LEGO bricks. LEGO Vikings was a user-developed theme. LEGO Studies was inspired by the BrickFilms site, where amateur animators post short films using LEGO figures. Community members were also involved in the creation of its Modular Buildings series. That was originally suggested by fans through a poll that LEGO organized, and members participated in the development of the sets from prototyping through to final designs [18].
In October 2019, LEGO announced the Lead User Lab. This is an incubator for innovative new businesses driven by LEGO community members, or lead users. As part of the program, LEGO co-creates and collaborates with a lead user who acts as the business owner [50]. The first project to come out of that initiative was its Build Together app. The app enables several people in-person to build a LEGO set together [23]. The Lead User Lab program continues LEGO’s rich history of co-creation with its community members.
An academic study of LEGO’s community collaboration found that it was most successful when invited members had a particular area of expertise, like architecture, sensor design, or manufacturing, that individuals within the company didn’t have. This combined with a deep experience in LEGO building proved most effective in ensuring that beta testing eliminated bugs and reduced commercial risk.
LEGO mostly rewards collaborators with a combination of experience, access, and LEGO products. When members were brought into a product insights program for a relatively limited time the intrinsic rewards of designing and building products are more motivating than financial rewards. However, for long-term projects or where the member provides services that are more like “work,” then a financial stipend is often better. Members were also attracted to the sense of community in working alongside fellow members [18].
A key lesson learned is to be as specific as possible about the expectations of collaborators upfront, and that users are more cooperative when they are working with LEGO employees directly rather than through other groups. Lastly, LEGO has learned to use NDAs sparingly. It now doesn’t use them for general community work, limiting their use to narrowly defined situations. It found that members who signed NDAs would often take them too seriously, not sharing any information at all with other members beyond the scope of the NDA [18]. Tormod explains [17]:
“We realized that they didn’t dare to talk to anyone about anything. They were simply too scared that something would slip!”
The company continues to shape new ideas through user panels and virtual project rooms, enlisting the help of skilled users on complex, long-term projects [18].
Despite LEGO’s changing attitude towards its fans, LEGO is still a large company and there has been an ongoing effort to educate personnel about the value of its community that has spanned the last two decades. A sticking point for many has been that the majority of LEGO’s revenue has been derived from its core 7-12-year-old boys market. So why look at anything else? Tormod said in 2022 “We never actually measured sales outside the 0-14 target group up until a few years ago” [17]. But Jake points out, “The average kid would spend $10 a year on LEGOs. Active kid fans of LEGOs would spend $20 a year, but adult enthusiasts would spend upwards of thousands of dollars per year on LEGOs” [10].
They started initially by giving presentations. “I put together a roadshow where I went into ten offices at various parts of the world and introduced myself and introduced the community to colleagues,” says Jake. “I pulled every favor I could pull, every internal politicking move I could make to get people there” [21]. In 2002, three staff members including Tormod wrote a white paper called LEGO Enthusiast Communities. It covered “what we could do, what we thought we should not do, and what they wanted and needed,” says Tormod. “This document was the first of many attempts at collecting and digesting some information about the LEGO fan community” [17]. This was followed in 2004 with a comic by Jake called “AFOLs,” as a way to get across insights into its adult customer base [17].
In 2005, they focused on older kids as part of a project called Core Gravity. “Internally, people were referring to fans as ‘nerds’,” says Tormod. “They said they wanted to market LEGO products to ‘ordinary’ people.” So they set out to show staff how dependent they were on core consumers, that presented a risk, and that these older kids were in fact ‘normal’ - “They played football, they took music lessons, they had friends, but they were heavy users of LEGO products as well” [23].
Efforts to educate staff internally about its adult community of consumers continued over the years. In 2017, Tormod wrote a one-pager, called Blind Spot. ”We chose that name to point out, again, that there was something that seemed to be a recurring blind spot for the LEGO Group: Adult consumers” [23]. Then in 2020, a breakthrough, LEGO released a line of products marked 18+, which were more complicated LEGO products aimed at adults [23].
During “my six years at LEGO, I never built one official community platform,” says Jake [21]. He didn’t have to. Like Strava, LEGO didn’t need to create a community. Communities around LEGO already existed - fans have been creating them organically for over 30 years. LEGO’s main job then wasn’t to replace them but to connect these disparate micro-communities to each other and with the company [8].
“The AFOL community is a globally connected community - they inspire each other, they do things together, they find solutions to everything. But if the LEGO group can also contribute to make that hobby even richer… then we should do so,” explains Tormod [24].
These communities take a few different forms:
Keeping up with all of these different entities is quite an undertaking. The main way LEGO connects with them all is through the LEGO Ambassador Network.
In January 2005 Jake announced, on LUGNET of course, the LEGO Ambassador program [14]. This was intended to provide a quick, direct way for the company to connect with its fans. 60 people applied via email and the LEGO group selected 15 of them [14]. Selection was based on “A review of the application against a long list of objective and subjective criteria, and based in no small part on participation and contribution to the LEGO community overall” [28]. These LEGO Ambassadors were the “representative voice” of the community. Each Ambassador cycle was for six months and they needed to re-apply every cycle with no limit on how long they could keep re-applying. It was managed via a private email list and they had to sign NDAs [28].
The program proved to be successful. It enabled the exchange of information, ideas, and community feedback between the Adult LEGO community and the LEGO Group. Ambassadors were involved in product design, community development, and communication. Comms was the key benefit. “There’s a funnel effect,” explains Jake. “I can work with the community leaders on information sharing, information gathering, and new projects which they in turn share with the community at large” [28].
The community team members would spend the majority of their time working with this group of people. I’d ask them, “What do you need? What are you wanting? What are your members telling you? And then I try and take those insights back into the organization in some way,” says Jake. For example, if they were having difficulty getting PR for an event, I’d try to solve that problem for them [21]:
“I'd sit with our PR team, or I'd come up with my own ideas… And I'd create a post… and I'd send it out to as many people as would receive it.”
And of course, building and maintaining those personal relationships took a lot of time, too. “I'd spend about 60%+ of my budget on travel. So I'd just show up at user group meetings and participate as a member, and they'd ask me questions,” says Jake [21].
The Ambassador program ran in this way for several years before it became the LEGO Ambassador Network (LAN) in 2014 [14]. At that time “LEGO Ambassadors” were renamed to “LUG Ambassadors” as a few people got the impression that a LEGO Ambassador was speaking on behalf of the LEGO group [25]. This wasn’t just a name change though, the structure changed slightly too. Now, rather than represent the community overall, Ambassadors represented one particular micro-community, whether that was a User Group, Online Community, or Fan Media outlet. So the selection process changed too. “We let the fans do it themselves,” says Peter Espersen, former Global Head of Crowd Sourcing and Online Innovation at LEGO. “If we go out and cherrypick and say this person should be the Ambassador, then we crowd a lot of people out. So they have to figure them out themselves” [29].
The LAN then is a community of community leaders [31]. It’s currently comprised of 350+ representative Ambassadors [30], who cover around 60 countries worldwide [23]. Through this network LEGO centralizes feedback from 600k+ community members [34], shares knowledge between community organizers, and promotes local and branded events [32].
For a couple of years, the network was run on a private blog-like platform [14] but has since transitioned to an Invision-based forum [33]. All Ambassadors get access to private forums where they engage with other ambassadors and representatives from the LEGO Group [31]. Since 2018 the program has operated with a tiered structure, with the groups in the network being assigned one of three tiers [34]:
All recognized (Tier 1 & 2) communities get access to early press releases, can be involved in product development, and are eligible for support packages. Tier 1 support includes 1 LEGO Set Box, 1 Activity Box, and 2 Play Brick Boxes. Whereas Tier 2 receive 2 LEGO Set Boxes, 2 Activity Boxes, and 4 Play Brick Boxes. They also get invitations to workshops and participate in marketing activities. The tiers don’t just apply to groups, but also to online communities and media outlets too, with similar benefits like early press releases and reviews.
One of the main benefits recognized communities get is access to LUGBULK. That’s a program LEGO runs providing discounted pricing on the bulk purchase of bricks. Pricing is kept confidential [35], but the program intends to enable the groups to pool their resources and buy large quantities of bricks for use in showcase events.
Today, NDAs are never used with the LEGO Ambassador Network, although members are expected to not leak details of the early-access sets and previews they are privy to [17].
Lego Insiders and other platforms
LEGO has had programs for its most engaged customers for some time. From the LEGO Club back in the early 2000s to its VIP program, which was overhauled becoming LEGO Insiders in August 2023 [40]. Lego Insiders is the brand's latest loyalty program designed to take fan engagement to the next level. The program provides exclusive benefits to members, such as early access and previews of upcoming sets, and opportunities to provide feedback to the LEGO team. Personalization is a key feature of the program, with members receiving content and rewards tailored to their interests. There’s also a custom-built platform, which enables members to join discussions, share photos of their LEGO creations, and take part in challenges and contests [41]. Of course, the main part of the program is about enabling members to earn points by participating in activities and purchasing sets, which they can redeem for rewards.
LEGO Insiders isn’t the only platform LEGO has created over the years. Alongside its LEGO Life magazine for kids, LEGO launched a safe social network for those under 13. This enables young builders to connect with a community of like-minded folks, share their creations, and inspire one another [46].
It also launched a social bookmarking platform known as ReBrick back in 2011. This was co-created alongside 500 community members, who provided feedback on design, development, and house rules [48]. Planning for it began in early 2010, with those 500 members being invited to a closed beta called “Octopus” later that year, launching in open beta in December of 2011 [47]. ReBrick was intended to act as a gateway to the fragmented, sprawling mass of LEGO fan sites by providing an entry point that gathered together the latest and greatest user-made creations. ReBrick’s reach enabled the community to gain attention from online media news channels beyond the typical circle of LEGO fan media and was an official honoree at the 2012 Webby Awards [47]. The site didn’t stand the test of time, though, and it refocused on hosting building contests in 2016 [49].
Events
LEGO’s work with fan-created conventions comes under the AFOL network events program, which is set up to organize their endorsement and sponsorship of larger events with 250+ attendees [24]. Smaller, user group-run events are eligible for help as part of its Event Support Program, which provides some free sets to organizing members.
In addition to supporting fan-created user groups and conventions, LEGO runs many of its own events too. This started back in 2005 with LEGO Fan Weekend. That was a collaboration between LEGO Group and a group of community members. It was supposed to be a test, giving them insight into what it would take to host an event for customers. But they kept it going annually until 2014 when they turned over responsibility to the community who continue to run it [17].
They have since run events around the world, including the U.S. and Canada, Japan, Portugal, and of course Denmark [42]. They now have an official event, LEGO KidsFest, that travels around [43]. These events enable fans to come together and connect with designers, influencers, and other enthusiasts. For LEGO, they benefit from feedback, getting insights, suggestions, and ideas that can influence future designs and programs [27].
LEGO Movie
One fun tie-in they did alongside the creation of the first LEGO movie, was a competition for fans to create their own stop-motion animations. Winners had their animations put into the real movie. Five entries were selected in the end, with several seconds of the movie being co-created with community members [19]. This made a lot of buzz online, 3 months out from the release of the movie, the competition page got more than 55 Million hits [44]. Ahead of other LEGO movie releases they’ve also connected User Groups with Warner Brothers in the U.S. to display fan-created models in theatres, too [45].
The BrickLink Acquisition
One final example of LEGO leveraging existing communities is its acquisition of BrickLink. BrickLink began in 2000 [18] and is the world’s largest secondary market for LEGO, with more than 10,000 resale vendors in 70 countries [26]. It’s also a community, too, with 1 million+ members engaging in its discussion forum [32]. LEGO acquired the company in 2019 [26] shortly after partnering on the AFOL designer program together [53]. It now runs the BrickLink designer program, which similarly creates fan-submitted sets using its Studio CAD-like software.
It’s worth noting that while I’ve mostly focused on the adult LEGO community, LEGO has an active kids community, too. This is mostly actioned through the LEGO Education Community, which supports educators in working with students, providing tips to manage materials and innovative lesson plans [54]. It also supports the FIRST LEGO League, a program in which teams of schoolchildren compete to build the best robot [6].
The core team behind all of this is small, just 23 people known as the Community Engagement team. There were pockets of community folks working within LEGO from the early 2000s, but it wasn’t until 2008 that they established a formal team to support AFOLs known as the AFOL Engagement Team, which began with just 3 members [24].
Most of the team is based in LEGO HQ in Billund, Denmark, but there are three people in the U.S. one in Singapore and another in Shanghai. A core group focuses on its work with the LAN. Another runs LEGO Ideas, and a third works on connecting the community with local markets [24]. In recent years LEGO has hired more than 20 adult fans [18], not only joining the community team but also becoming set designers, too [5].
For most of LEGO's 90-year history, it has had a distant relationship with its community. But since the early 2000s, a determined group of people within the organization persisted in bringing greater awareness and appreciation for the huge business impact it could have. And that’s been proven out. From near bankruptcy, LEGO has seen double-digit growth for over a decade as it has embraced its community. Its community efforts have spawned new product lines, driven awareness, grown revenues, and helped to revitalize the LEGO brand along the way. Perhaps the biggest impact the LEGO community has had though, is in keeping LEGO true to its roots. The passion and love for the product exudes from everything the community does. As Jørgen says, the LEGO community is “an avenue to the truth. And in today’s world, a CEO needs every avenue to the truth that he or she can find” [55].
Phew, there you have it! That’s how LEGO drives growth through community. For more details, check out the sources below. If you found this useful, please share it with friends and colleagues, and don't forget to subscribe. ✌
