Lego's Facebook page has 11.6 million fans, and its Lego YouTube channel gets more than 1 billion views a year, under efforts overseen by Lars Silberbauer, LEGO's senior global director of social media and search.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- How tough is it to be the senior global director of social media and video for LEGO Group, the world's No. 1 toy brand? How hard can it be to create content marketing around one of the most-recognizable brands across all industries?
Well, as Lars Silberbauer, LEGO's London-based senior global director of social media and search told the Content Marketing World conference in Cleveland, LEGO's are a pretty generic product. "The patent on producing Lego bricks ran out years ago," he said, so that other than the trademarked logo, anyone with a plastic printer can make their own colorful little bricks.
What makes LEGO's different and desirable -- and ultimately preferred over other building toys -- are the ways LEGO connects with people around their bricks and inspires fans to create content about their creations.
"We have 20 times more content being generated by users than we do ourselves," Silberbauer said. "That is what makes a ton of difference."
Lars Silberbauer, addressing the Content Marketing World 2016 conference in Cleveland on Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016, oversees LEGO Group's global social media, online videos, and search strategy. When Silberbauer joined LEGO in 2011, the company didn't have a Facebook page or a YouTube channel. But now, LEGO's Facebook page has 11.6 million fans, and its LEGO YouTube channel gets more than 1 billion views a year. LEGO's also get huge traffic on foreign social media such as Youku.com and Tudou.com
Content Marketing World founder Joe Pulizzi called LEGO one of the greatest brands in the world. "I received Brick Kicks magazine when I was a kid," and now 35 years later, his sons pore over their issues of Lego Club magazine the same way he did.
LEGO was recently ranked No. 1 among the 15 most engaging brands, as well as the top most-watched brand on YouTube. "On a good day, up to 26 years worth of video are being watched per day," Silberbauer said.
He oversees LEGO's social media, online videos, and search strategy. His team members, based in Los Angeles; Enfield, Connecticut; London; Billund, Denmark; Shanghai, China; and Singapore, together speak more than 25 languages.
And because consumers tend to play with LEGOs outside of regular business hours, "we need to have 24/7 engagement across all platforms," he said. Whenever users upload images or videos of their LEGO creations, "we need to make sure it's appropriate, and engage with that consumer in real time. We can talk about content and technology, but what's more important is the [connection with] people."
LEGO knows its consumers have two core needs: The desire to build together, and the pride in their creations. Social media is full of people sharing "cute kids building cute things," even if nobody quite knows what those kids are making.
He showed a picture of one boy holding a fanciful LEGO shape, and said: "I'm sure he could give us a great story about what this is about." Listening to a child talking to himself while he's building something with LEGOs under the coffee table, you get a glimpse into his imagination.
"Have an idea for a LEGO set?" LEGO asks its users. "Share your ideas, and if you get 10,000 supporters, we might make that product." If enough people rally around a particular idea, they will wait for that product to come to market without LEGO having to create any advertising for it, because people already want it.
Because people love to build together and share what they've created, "We have 20 times more content being generated by users than we do ourselves," said Lars Silberbauer, LEGO Group's senior global director of social media and search, at Content Marketing World 2016. The first campaign he did for LEGO cost $100, because that's all the money the people in the room had in their wallets. So they created a campaign around a funny LEGO figure named George, asking people to create their own versions and post pictures of themselves with George on vacation.
Within 20 minutes, people shared pictures of George in Rome, in Spain, in front of the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and in Hawaii. One bridesmaid brought George to her friend's wedding, prompting someone else to create a LEGO bride for George. Then George's LEGO ex-girlfriend showed up, even though George's bride was by this point visibly pregnant.
"It's amazing how much you can actually do if you listen to the social media of your consumers, and what they do," he said.
Another time, LEGO teamed up with Facebook, which has the greatest reach among parents, to launch the #Kronkiwongi project. Silberbauer said 98 percent of us are creative geniuses at 3 years old, but by the time we are grownups, only 2 percent of us have retained that level of creativity.
When children all over the world were invited to build a kronkiwongi, adults immediately asked, "A what?" but the children knew exactly what that was, even if they didn't all have the same idea. LEGO also sent kronkiwongi-building sets to 200 influential parent bloggers to share the news across social media.
Engagement rose 61 percent on LEGO's Facebook page, as parents submitted pictures of their children's creations. The kronkiwongi campaign ultimately reached 80 percent of the moms LEGO had targeted on Facebook, or 27 million people.