LEGO Marketing Operations Strategy
Background & Role
During the 2023 Tanabata Festival（Valentine's Day）, I collaborated with the creative team, strategists, and the marketing department as a project manager on a marketing initiative uniting Lego and Tmall, China's leading online shopping platform. (The duration of the project was 1.5 month)
Problem & Goal
Problem
Goal
The Lego Group China struggles to control third-party platform pricing as stores can sell unsold Lego boxes at discounted rates, reducing inventory but leading to a loss of official channel users.
Increase sales on official channels without being able to intervene on other platforms
HMW Question
How can we encourage people to choose official channels and pay more at higher prices?
Work Flow
Collaborated with strategists to conduct competitive analysis, identify opportunities, and adjust based on real user feedback. Aligned with partners to bring ideas to fruition and launch the project. Iterated based on data and feedback.
Research
Identifying actionable insights
Listen to real customers
Decision Making
Implementation
Research
We performed competitive analyses on companies grappling with customer loss from third-party platforms. Additionally, we gathered feedback on buying behavior through interviews and surveys at Lego stores.
Market
User
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Research Findings
Providing unique benefits and services exclusive to our platform, following the approach of other successful toy companies like Popmart and beauty brands, is a strategic direction to attract consumers.
Membership System
Customized services
Exclusive Gifts
Holiday Events
Long-term
Short-term operation （T- Mall）
Personas
We discovered that gifting is a key motivator for purchasing Lego toys, with three primary scenarios: gifting to children and gifting to friends.
Consumers, as gift-givers, aim for gifts that convey deeper sentiments and foster stronger connections between individuals.
Gifting to children 43%
User
Goals
Frustrations
Antony
Age: 4 year-old
Education: Kindergarten
Hometown: Shanghai, China
"I like Lego City, policemen and firefighters are my favorite! I always play Lego with my friends."
Be a good child and get new Legos.
Hard to feel the connection with the Lego characters.
Have fun playing Lego and watching Lego cartoon animation with friends.
Consumer
Goals
Frustrations
Any
Age: 34 year-old
Career: Teacher
Hometown: Shanghai, China
"I will buy Lego as a reward or gift to my kid under certain circumstances."
Buy Lego toys at a cheaper price and better services.
The benefits of buying Lego in an official store are small.
Show my love to my kid and motivate him doing better.
Gifting to friends (Colleagues, Couples, Friend's Kids...) 36%
User
Goals
Frustrations
Renee
Age: 24 year-old
Education: Graduate student
Hometown: Shenzhen, China
"I am a big fan of Lego, I will be happy if I get Lego as a gift from my friends."
Having fun when playing Lego
Hard to feel the connection with the Lego characters.
Feel the love from couples and friends
Consumer
Goals
Leo
Age: 28 year-old
Career:
Developer
Hometown: Shanghai, China
"I want to show my gratefulness for buying a Lego as a gift for my friends. Lego is a good gifting choice, not too expensive nor too cheap."
Show my gratefulness and make the gift special.
Frustrations
I am afraid that choosing Lego as a gift is a little less heartfelt.
Solution
Leveraged the Valentine's Day gifting occasion on the Tmall platform to launch the "LEGO Play Festival," offering custom LEGO official blessing videos to members who make purchases, along with an exclusive Valentine's Day gift box.
Creative
Cost-effective
Highly shareable to reach a broader audience on social media
Customized greeting video
Holiday Gift Box
Ritualistic
Better user Experience
Implementation
Storyboards
I worked with the creative team to draft storyboards for customized greeting videos.
Collaboration
As the project manager, I facilitated collaboration between the video-making agency and Lego's internal creative and marketing teams. We adhered to the timeline and provided timely feedback on various video versions.
White Model videos
Feedbacks
Outcome
We've developed three customizable videos successfully in time tailored to specific user needs: one for a more romantic Valentine's Day theme – for both female and male partners (use neutral voiceovers to accommodate the LGBTIQA+ community), and another for diverse gifting occasions – suitable for children and friends.
Gift to Friends and Children
Gift to Girl friend
Gift to Boy Friend
T-mall Interfaces
Customers can directly finish customizing their own videos after buying Lego box at T-Mall online store
Event Release
Process Description
After selecting the product, customers can directly go to customize the video, download and share it
