Advent Calendar

Lego and Playmobil are constantly innovating!

A good example of an innovation is the creation of advent calendars.

Normally, advent calendars are made up with chocolates by famous chocolate brands like Nestlé, Kinder, Milka, etc... Every child has an advent calender; it helps them to wait before Christmas!

The good thing about Playmobil and Lego advent calendars is that they are not made up with chocolates but with small toys.

Nowadays, many children are suffering from obesity and parents pay more and more attention to the food their children eat.

Lego and Playmobil succeeded in launching their brand in a new market: the advent calendar market!

Enjoy the calendars proposed by the two brands !

Lego Advent Calendar

Playmobil Advent Calendar

Advertising in the 2000's

Here is an ad in the 2000's. There is a real history told to the children and there are many figurines and accessories.

First advertising of Playmobil

This is one of the fisrt avertising for Playmobil. 

We can see that the film is quite easy, with just a few of the figurines which were the first sold.

Legoland & Playmobil Fun Park

Lego and Playmobil both have entertainment parks where children can play and have fun!

Lego has several LEGOLAND Theme Parks in countries such as in Denmark, in the United Kingdom, in the United Stated and in Germany. Lego also has LEGOLAND Discovery Centres in cities like Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Berlin, Ruhrgebiet and Manchester.

Playmobil also has their own branding parks that are called PLAYMOBIL Fun Parks. They are located in Zirndorf (Germany), Paris (France), Malta, Athens (Greece) and Palm Beach Gardens (USA).

These parks are like the Disneyland parks; they are composed of merry-go-round, roller coasters, restaurants, water parks, shops, and playgrounds… Children come with their parents to spend time there and have fun!

Having branding parks is a good way for a brand to develop people’s awareness. Children enjoy their time in the parks and become fans of the brands (Playmobil or Lego).  It’s a good way of communication or advertising!

Moreover, in every park, shops sell Lego/Playmobil products. And I can tell you, when you go in this kind of parks; you always leave with something, a “souvenir”. It’s the same as in Disneyland parks. You can buy toys, clothes, and accessories; whatever you want.

Lego Licensing Strategy

One of Lego key to success is probably their licensing strategy. They are currently working with ten different licensers including prestigious ones such as Disney, Lucasfilm and Warner Bros.

This way, they propose a wide range of different products and are able to stick to the new trends. Their sets include Pirates of Caribbean, Prince of Persia, Toy Story, Cars, Harry Potter, Spiderman, Sponge Bob and their greatest success Star Wars (Lego best sale is the rebel Trooper Battle Pack from the Star Wars collection), as well as Winnie the Pooh Duplo sets for younger children.

They also developed their licensing partnerships in the video games sector, which appeared to be very successful : the video game Lego Pirates of Caribbean reached 63 000 sales in only five weeks, and their new release Lego Harry Potter year 5 to 7 (see trailer below) is probably going to be a success too.

Why did Lego choose this policy ? Jill Wilfert, Lego VP Global Partnerships and Alliance Management, explains this strategy : “we want to stay relevant and top-of-mind with children, and we see licensing as a way to reach a new audience of kids while still appealing to our core users -- but we are extremely selective […]. The marriage between the property and Lego has to make sense in the mind of the consumer, and we want to be able to deliver unique products that express the creativity and imagination of our brand". 

Lego favors licenses that are globally relevant and known in the whole world. They also prefer to license mature properties or those with characteristics that present an opportunity to leverage both brands. 

Playmobil on the other hand refuse to use licenses to increase their sales : Bruno Bérard, Director of Playmobil France explains that “Using licenses is contrary to our DNA […]. Children have to imagine their own stories”. 

Whose strategy is the best one, it is not us to judge. The only thing we can say is that Lego's turnover is about 2 billion dollars, as against 474 million for Playmobil, which seems to underline how profitable Lego's licensing strategy is.

LEGO Summer Beach Tour

Each Year, Lego organize the Lego Summer Beach Tour. They move from town to town across France. 

Children can play with giant Lego on the beach. It is a way for Lego to be known for the parents and children and so increase awareness towards the brand.

Playmobil and Lego in Shops for Christmas !

For Christmas, it is like a small War between Playmobil and Lego: the one who will win will be the one who will have the biggest space for demonstrating its products.

Here is the example of Playmobil which has a lot of products in end of display and some toys in demonstration. They try to be the most visible as possible. When you enter in this shop, it is sure that you see Playmobil !

LEGO vs PLAYMOBIL

A Crucial Debate

 Lego vs Playmobil : the debate is still on ! Here is a image made by Lego fans to express their preference.

Smartphone Applications

Playmobil and Lego are also present on Smartphone applications, which has become an important Web 2.0 tool for communication.

There are two iPhone applications for Playmobil:

•        Playmofans

A funny application with all sorts of information about your favourite toy: Playmobil.

Fans of the world of Playmobil will spend a great time.

Price: 1,59€

Language: English

•       Fun Park

A German application that will help you to get all the information about the German Playmobil Fun Park: map, services, opening and closing time…  

Price: Free

Language: German

Lego has many more iPhone applications than Playmobil. There are 6 different applications.

Here are some examples:

•        LEGO Photo

Immortalize your favourite things and special moments in Lego bricks.

Price: Free

Language: English

•      Lego Creationary

The Creationary board game is an award-winning build-and-guess Lego game that challenges the imagination, creativity, building and guessing skills of you, your family, your friends with more than 300 bricks and accessories.

Price: Free

Language: English

•        Lego Minifigures Collector

Slide the Lego price to get the Minifigures parts rolling. Match all the 3 pieces of a Lego Minifigures (head, torso and legs) and make it part of your personal collection.

Price: Free

Language: English 

The Playmobil Community

Lego and Playmobil succeed in Brand Building

How did Lego and Playmobil manage to remain toy market’s leaders after all these years ? How did they succeed in building such strong brands ?

As we said earlier, the success of brand building is mainly linked to brand awareness, appeal, capacity to create emotion and loyalty. Both Lego and Playmobil managed to gather all these elements in order to build strong brands : 

• Brand awareness : both brands benefit from very large spaces dedicated to their tosy in all the supermarkets or toy shop we went to, which helps creating a greatest awareness among customers. Moreover, Lego and Playmobil are active on different social medias as we will see later on, and create special events (such as beach tours) in order to increase their visibility.

Toys'R Us Bordeaux : each brand has its own dedicated space

• Appeal : they both succeed in proposing the right product in the right way to customer, and are constantly innovating in order to fit the consumers will and so appeal them. Lego uses licensing as a way to stick to the trend among kids and appeal even more customers

• Emotion : being part of the children market, both brands are very emotion focus. Kids do not want something for rational reasons but for emotional reasons such as I love this superhero so I want the Lego licensed with this superhero, I want to be a fireman so I want the firemen set from Playmobil…

• Loyalty : this might be the key element for these brands. If a child is pro-Lego or pro-Playmobil, once grown up he or she will buy to his children what his parents used to buy him and so on and son. According to the furious debate on the Internet, both brands succeeded in creating real communities, extremely loyal to one brand or the other. 

So both Lego and Playmobil succeeded in the delicate art of brand building by mastering the main elements needed to create strong brands.

Playmobil and Lego surfing on the Social Media Trend

Playmobil and Lego are following the Social Media trend.

As a matter of fact, they are both present on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Playmobil on Facebook

11.792 people who like the page

645 people talking about it

Lego on Facebook 

1.362.360 people who like the official page

14.654 people talking about it

Playmobil on Twitter

Lego on Twitter

As far as YouTube is concerned, many videos can be found about Playmobil or Lego. It can be commercials, videos made by random people, animation videos, and report…

Lego has an official YouTube channel: Lego Club TV; with more than 21 million videos watched by people and more than 21 thousand subscribers.

Playmobil only has small non-official YouTube channel that are often created by random fans.

Playmobil & Lego : What are they doing to be "Sustainable" ?

PLAYMOBIL product in its own plants

The main asset of the company PLAYMOBIL is that it produces in its own facilities in modern manufacturing.

Horst Brandstätter, the owner of PLAYMOBIL, explains his loyalty to the site: "A company can provide a high quality only if its products are manufactured in its workshops with people who have developed a flair for the requirements of the brand and have learned to provide the highest quality. "To remain competitive, PLAYMOBIL has invested the last five years more than 150 million euros in its manufacturing sites, beginning with Germany.

Less than 5% of PLAYMOBIL items are made in China, with partners for many years, which are ICTI certified. These are electronic items who need a lot of manual work. These products are of course subject to the same safety testing and quality as the rest of the range.

Corporate Responsibility of LEGO

Ever since the founding of the company in 1932, the LEGO Group has considered it important to take part in the improvement of issues that concern the “world” inside the LEGO Group as well as in relation to our stakeholders outside the LEGO Group - being the child and its parents, the retail shops, vendors and the society in general.

”Only the best is good enough” was the motto of Ole Kirk Kristiansen, founder of the company and inventor of LEGO bricks, and today we still involve that spirit in every way we operate.

This means that they do their best to make a positive impact on areas such as: human rights, working environment, environment, anti-corruption, charity etc.

The Environmental Policy shall ensure that all activities in The LEGO Group are planned and executed with respect towards the surrounding environment. The LEGO Group strives to ensure a high environmental standard. Compliance with national and international legislation and other standards, which The LEGO Group has adopted, is considered a minimum requirement. The Environmental policy supports the continuous process of integrating the Global Compact principles in our daily work:

• Support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges
• Undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility
• Encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies.

The LEGO Group Way

• Continuous long term improvement: they continuously identify new improvement areas with the overall goal to protect natural resources and reduce climate impacts. The primary focus is on energy consumption, materials, waste, procurement and new technology. All production sites must be certified according to the international environmental management standard ISO 14001.
• Products: they take environmental concerns into consideration through the entire life cycle of the products; from development, through production, distribution, in the daily use and disposal.
• Suppliers: They have defined environmental standards in the LEGO Group Code of Conduct for their suppliers. Through on site audits and dialogue they engage actively with their suppliers to ensure and influence their environmental awareness and practice.
• Responsibility: They integrate environmental considerations in all relevant processes and activities, and engage employees at all levels to assume responsibility for – and participate in – environmental activities. Each employee has the right and duty to call attention to circumstances which in his/her opinion are unreasonable or harmful to the environment.

The Toy Market - Key Facts and Figures

• Highly competitive and seasonal market : 60% of sales are made between mid-October an end of December

Weights of sales of the last three months of 2010 (compared to Total sales 2010) :

October               6.4%

November         19.3%

December          32.4%

• 96% of parents consider that toys are tools to develop creativity and learning abilities, parents represent 37.1% of the buyers

• Consumption is different according to the country : Japanese children worship electronic toys whereas the rest of Asian consumers would rather buy educational toys, European children prefer traditional toys and American children love toys based on cartoon or movie characters. 

• In France, Infant toys represents 22% of total sales

• High renewal rate : 60% of toys references are changed every year

• Novelty oriented market : new products = 60% of total sales

• 46% of sales are made by GSS (specialist retailers) 

• In 2010, the total turnover of the Toy market in France was €3.058 billion, which represents an increase of 3% compared to 2009.

• France is the second European country in terms of turnover : the United Kingdom represents 23.7% of the total European turnover, France represents 21.5%, and Germany 17.6%.

• In France, Playmobil owns 7% of the toy market, 5% for Lego.

• Worldwide, Lego is the 4th actor of the toy market with a market share of 5.9%

 

Lego – Only the Best is Good Enough

The Lego group originates from the workshop of a Danish carpenter, Ole Kirk Christiansen, who began making wooden toys in 1932.The name Lego (from the Danish “play-well”) appears in 1934. Christiansen expanded its production to plastic toys in 1947 and the famous interlocking bricks were born in 1949. From this invention, the whole Lego concept was born, and the brand has since known a permanent expansion. 

Thousands of different sets were released, all of which were very appealing for boys of all generations : town and city, space, robots, pirates, trains, Vikings, castle, dinosaurs, undersea exploration and wild west.

But Lego tried to target more than just boys, so along with releasing new sets for boys, they created new lines of products, all using the same construction concepts :

-         -   Duplo, created in 1969, is a range of simple blocks which measure twice the width, height and depth of standard Lego blocks. This line, dedicated to children from 1 to 5 years old, includes a farm, a zoo and many other sets based on animals.

-          - Belville and Clikit are lines dedicated to young girls, using the same bricks as standard Lego sets but with girly colors. The line offer girly sets such as a horse-riding club, a princess castle...

-          - Bionicle (now Hero factory) and Lego Technics make it possible for Lego to target teenagers. These more complex sets include motors, gears, lights, cameras and many mechanics tools that can be used with Lego components to build motorized vehicles for example.

Technical expertise has become more and more important for Lego. Along with creating play sets for children, they launched many scientific projects using Lego bricks and technical materials. We could quote the program Lego Bricks in Space which include experiments made in the International SpaceStation to know how Lego models react in microgravity ; but Lego main activity regarding the scientific experimentation is the robot conception and building. They developed Robot sets that can be programmed through the use of Windows or Apple softwares. These robots are used for both scientific experiments and Lego fans entertainment : robot tournaments are organized by Lego every year, such as the Junior First Lego League that gathered in 2010 12,882 students in the United States and Canada.

Building a substantial universe around the bricks sets has been one of Lego’s main goals for a very long time. They widen their activities to the production of movies and video games, the creation of theme parks etc. In order to be closer to their customers, they also created amazing retails stores in which one can find almost any kind of brick, set or figure he is looking for. 

Lego Store in New York City