LEGO's global Holiday Workshop campaign leans on Daft Punk and UAE activations.
The LEGO Group launched The LEGO Holiday Workshop, its global festive campaign, on 5 November. Made by its in-house Our LEGO Agency, it plays on the gift so good the giver wants to keep it, with store activations planned in the UAE.
The campaign centres on a 74-second film directed by Michael Gracey, known for The Greatest Showman and Better Man, and set to Daft Punk's 2001 track One More Time. It follows a single 2x4 brick through a workshop of LEGO characters, including Daft Punk minifigures, Marvel heroes, ET and a character from K-Pop Demon Hunters, who each add something before struggling to let the finished gift go. Six 15-second films cover other parts of the range, and the push runs across digital video, social, creators, PR, experiential and in-store activity. The Daft Punk role follows a partnership LEGO announced in October.
LEGO says the idea comes from its own research, an online survey of 11,001 parents of children aged three to 16 in 11 countries between 23 and 29 September. It found that 24% had bought a LEGO set as a gift partly for their own enjoyment, 19% had bought a second set to keep, and 11% had kept the gift. No Gulf market was in the sample.
In the UAE, LEGO Certified Stores will run Build-A-Brick challenges, a hunt for hidden elves, Yetis and gingerbread characters, and a Santa's Post Box where children can submit wishlists for a chance to win them, plus bauble gifts with qualifying purchases. Activations also run at LEGO's 5th Avenue and Leicester Square flagships, a holiday playground in Sydney's Pitt Street Mall, and in Canada and Mexico. LEGO hasn't shared media spend or targets.
Our read: for Gulf marketers the useful part is the structure, one global film from an in-house agency carried locally through retail theatre. With the regional range sold on LEGO.me, the UAE stores become where the campaign turns into sales during the December gifting season.
Why it matters
A global brand is running its festive campaign through its in-house agency and leaning on store activations in markets like the UAE, a model Gulf retailers and franchise partners can borrow.
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