Inside LEGO Marketing Campaigns: Strategy & Advertising Examples

Most toy brands advertise toys, but LEGO advertises what happens after you open the box. That idea runs through almost every example in LEGO marketing campaigns; from a father-and-son TV spot in 2013 to a 2026 film where Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappé and Vinícius Jr. squabble over a brick-built trophy.

The commercial case for the approach is hard to ignore. In 2025 the LEGO Group reported revenue of DKK 83.5 billion (up 12%) and operating profit of DKK 22.0 billion (up 18%). It also says it outperformed a growing toy market and gained share, with strong demand among both children and adults. Marketing isn’t the only reason, but it’s hard to separate a brand this consistent from the campaigns that keep it that way.

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How LEGO Approaches Marketing and Advertising

Before the case studies, a little context. You can’t read a single LEGO ad properly without knowing what the brand is trying to build around it.

Creativity and Play as Core Brand Messages

The LEGO marketing strategy rarely sells a set. It sells the feeling of making something. Rebuild the World (2019) framed the brick as a creativity platform. Never Stop Playing (2025 and 2026) pushed the same idea further, arguing that play shouldn’t stop at a certain age. LEGO’s chief product and marketing officer, Julia Goldin, said their campaigns were about creative play for “families and adults alike.”

We believe that play transcends age; whether you’re 8 or 80, it has the remarkable ability to spark imagination, build confidence, and reconnect us with what truly matters.

That message sits on top of research. A LEGO-commissioned survey of 20,000 parents and children across 10 countries found that 44% of kids feel pressure to grow up quickly and 48% have stopped playing with certain things after being told they were childish. The brand message is a response to a measurable tension, not just a nice sentiment.

Marketing to Children, Parents, and Adult Fans

LEGO doesn’t have one audience, and its marketing doesn’t pretend to.

Adults buying for themselves made up about a fifth of LEGO’s sales by 2021, up from 5% five years earlier, according to figures reported by the Wall Street Journal. Fortune has estimated that 18+ sets are about 15% of the overall portfolio. Kids, parents, teenagers and adult collectors all get different creative, different channels and different tones. We unpack that properly in the target audience section below.

Combining Product Marketing With Brand Storytelling

The pattern is story first, product as proof.

A football film ends on a trophy you can buy. A zero-gravity stunt sits next to a NASA-approved lunar lander. Much of this work comes from inside the company: Goldin’s team included an in-house creative agency when she described it to The Drum, and Adweek reports that the Tom Holland film was developed by LEGO’s own agency. That’s a big part of why the lego brand strategy feels so consistent.

The LEGO Marketing Mix at a Glance

A quick lego marketing mix view helps frame the campaigns:

• Product: a portfolio of more than 860 products from entry-level sets to premium adult builds.
• Price: a deliberately wide range. The 2026 World Cup collection runs from $29.99 to $199.99 while adult sets can reach several hundred dollars.
• Place: LEGO.com, LEGO Stores and retail partners, with pre-orders also open on Amazon for the World Cup range.
• Promotion: films, celebrity and creator partnerships, events and community platforms, which is what the rest of this article covers.

Sustainability shows up in this mix too, though less as a standalone ad and more as a proof point. LEGO says the estimated share of renewable and recycled content in the materials bought to make its bricks rose to 52% in 2025, up from 33% in 2024.

Best LEGO Marketing Campaigns

How We Chose These LEGO Campaigns

We didn’t pick the most-viewed campaigns. We picked the ones that teach a marketer something. Four filters shaped the list:

1. A clear creative idea. If you can’t explain it in a sentence, it’s hard to learn from.
2. Range. The list spans 2013 to 2026 and speaks to young kids, girls, gamers, football fans, parents and adults.
3. Different formats. Brand platform, celebrity film, creator story, entertainment launch, partnership and product-led campaign all appear.
4. A public record. Each one has press releases, trade coverage or agency case material we could check.

LEGO Rebuild the World Campaign (2019 to present)

• Objective: Give LEGO a global brand platform and introduce the brand to markets where bricks weren’t a childhood habit.
• Target audience: Children and parents, with adult builders included in the message.
• Channels: TV, digital, cinema, out-of-home and live events; later Spotify, e-commerce and LEGO Stores.

Rebuild the World is a brand platform rather than a single ad, which makes the lego rebuild the world campaign the anchor for everything else in this guide. It launched in September 2019 with musician Mark Ronson, a live-action film, city events and an invitation for kids to share creations on the LEGO Life app.

BETC Paris and The LEGO Agency built it, and LEGO called it its most ambitious global brand campaign to date. Short films with Ronson, Simone Biles and designer Tomo Koizumi followed in October. The platform is still running: the 2025 Tom Holland film is explicitly part of the annual Rebuild the World campaign.

Why it worked: It gave LEGO one idea flexible enough to survive years of different executions. The word “rebuild” matched a real product truth, since bricks can always be taken apart and made into something else. So, build your platform around a product truth, then let each campaign change the story without changing the idea.

Everyone Wants a Piece (2026)

• Objective: Own the football moment around the 2026 World Cup and launch a collectible range ahead of the May 1 release.
• Target audience: Football fans, young fans and families, and collectors.
• Channels: Instagram (the film went live April 2), athlete-owned accounts, LEGO.com and Amazon pre-orders, plus local events.

This is a celebrity-led film tied directly to a product launch. In the 60-second spot, Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappé and Vinícius Jr. sit around a table, each trying to plant their own minifigure on a brick-built World Cup trophy, until a young boy steps in and finishes the job.

The faces were digitally placed onto doubles so all four appear in one room. Local activations extend it: Golazo Brands ran a Belgian school competition reaching 4,701 schools, plus a Fan Village, and Bangkok hosted a mall event from 18 to 23 June 2026 with photo and “wall of fame” zones.

Why it worked: The stars did the attention work and the kid did the brand work. Messi’s post of the ad reportedly gained 17 million likes and more than 180 million views in a day. Ending on a child rather than a footballer put LEGO’s message, that everyone gets to play, inside a spot that could have been pure star power. The product was part of the story instead of an afterthought, and the sets came with hidden details and collectible touches that gave fans a reason to buy.

When you borrow fame, give the audience a role in the story so your message survives the star power.

Jason Momoa’s Plans to Get the World Playing! (2026)

• Objective: Put a number and a face on the “play deficit” and get families playing together.
• Target audience: Parents and families, plus a wider adult audience.
• Channels: Online film, PR and social, tied to World Play Day.

This is a public-service-style film within Never Stop Playing. Jason Momoa is introduced as the newest LEGO “Playmaker” and pitches a masterplan to a room of LEGO characters, centred on the simple “brick click” of snapping two bricks together. The film runs close to three minutes.

Why it worked: It turned a soft idea into a problem with a size. The mock-corporate setup let LEGO stay funny while saying something serious about screen-heavy family life, and the “brick click” gave viewers an action small enough to do that evening.

Never Stop Playing, ft. Tom Holland (2025)

• Objective: Push back on pressure to grow up and extend play to teens and adults.
• Target audience: Kids, teens, parents and adults.
• Channels: A short film, LEGO.com and social, plus a physical exhibition at LEGO House.

In the two-minute film, set to AC/DC’s “High Voltage,” Tom Holland, best known for his role as Spider-Man, clicks two bricks together and turns into a series of characters, including an athlete, an innovator and an uptight boss who has forgotten how to have fun.

On a quest to rebuild the world with play, one LEGO brick at a time.

Los Pérez directed through Biscuit Filmworks. Props from the film, including the brick-built football and a custom Botanicals suit, went on show at LEGO House from September 2025.

Why it worked: The idea came from a real tension, and the research gave the press something concrete to report: 44% of kids feeling pressure to grow up and 48% having stopped playing after being called childish. The tone, a rock soundtrack and fast character changes, spoke to teens and adults who’d roll their eyes at a conventional toy ad. The exhibition carried the film into the real world.

LEGO Lunar Lander Unboxing in Zero Gravity w/ Astronaut Mike Massimino (2019)

• Objective: Promote the LEGO City Space range while the brand marked the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing.
• Target audience: Kids and families, space fans, and adult collectors (for the Lunar Lander).
• Channels: LEGO’s YouTube channel and social, with posts flagged as paid partnership.

This is a stunt-led product video. Former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino unboxes and builds the City Mars Research Shuttle aboard Novespace’s Air Zero G plane, where brief weightless periods send pieces flying around the cabin. It sits alongside the 1,087-piece NASA Apollo 11 Lunar Lander, which launched on June 1, 2019 at $99.99 a life-size astronaut built from 30,000 bricks, and a Scholastic partnership to send 50 children to NASA Space Camp.

Why it worked: The product’s most relatable annoyance became the entertainment. Anyone who has lost a tiny piece under the sofa understood the joke at once, and Massimino lent the stunt real credibility. It also worked as one beat in a bigger Apollo story, so the stunt had context.

I Built My First WORKING Prosthetic Arm Out of LEGO In One Week (2019)

• Objective: Show what building with LEGO makes possible for a real person, told in a creator’s voice instead of the brand’s.
• Target audience: Teens, young adults and parents, especially anyone curious about engineering.
• Channels: YouTube and social, amplified by international press coverage.

This is a creator-led story rather than an ad. Aguilar, who goes by Hand Solo, was born without a right forearm and built his first LEGO arm at nine. Guinness World Records recognises him for the first functional LEGO prosthetic arm, completed in 2017 with bricks from a Technic helicopter set. He shared a free video explaining how to build and program his latest arm.

Why it worked: The bricks were the tool, not the pitch. Nobody had to be told that LEGO is creative, because a teenager’s working arm showed it. Because Aguilar told the story in his own words, it avoided the polish that makes brand stories feel staged, and the press picked it up without being asked.

So, when the story is bigger than the product, step back and let the person tell it.

Girlz – LEGO Friends (2016)

• Objective: Deepen LEGO Friends with girls by building a story world around the sets, four years after the line launched.
• Target audience: Girls and their parents.
• Channels: An animated film, a music video, TV ads and an app.

Girlz is an entertainment-led campaign. LEGO Friends: Girlz 4 Life was the line’s first movie, released in March 2016. Its plot follows five friends whose hit song “Girlz” is stolen by a pop star’s manager. The DVD release included the official “Girlz” music video, so the song could live beyond the film.

Why it worked: Characters with names and personalities, a song that could travel beyond the toy aisle and a plot the sets could act out gave the line more reach than product demos alone.

Inspire Imagination and Keep Building (2015)

• Objective: Reach girls with a message about creativity rather than gender.
• Target audience: Girls and, just as importantly, their parents.
• Channels: A 60-second spot made with Union Made Creative.

Inspire her to use her imagination and watch her #KeepBuilding amazing creations with LEGO® bricks- because you taught her how to think and dream.

This is an emotional brand film that shifts the conversation from “girls’ toys” to independent kids. A girl builds with LEGO while a voiceover thanks a parent for teaching her to think and dream, before she makes something to make them proud. Campaign’s reading was that LEGO isn’t a toy for boys or for girls, but for independent children.

Why it worked: It changed the question. Instead of adding another product range for girls, it spoke to what kids and parents already valued, and it landed on the parent-child bond that makes both groups care.

LEGO Dimensions (2015)

• Objective: Enter the toys-to-life game category and bring older kids back to bricks.
• Target audience: Gamers and families, plus fans of the franchises involved.
• Channels: Announcement and launch trailers, teaser videos with actors, a weekly YouTube show and retail starter packs. Marketing was led largely by Warner Bros. Interactive, with LEGO as a close partner.

LEGO Dimensions is a product-and-entertainment launch where physical minifigures unlock characters in a video game. It brought together 14 franchises, including DC Comics, The Lord of the Rings and The Simpsons. The $100 starter pack included Batman, Gandalf and Wyldstyle. A teaser had Christopher Lloyd reprising Doc Brown, and a weekly YouTube show kicked off ahead of the late-September launch with a starter-pack unboxing.

Why it worked: The franchise crossover was the hook. It let players mix worlds that would never otherwise meet, and it gave people a physical reason to keep buying, because every new minifigure unlocked more play. The trailers also leaned on nostalgia for parents and spectacle for kids.

Let’s Build (2014)

• Objective: Re-establish LEGO on UK TV with its first brand campaign there in three decades.
• Target audience: Families, with mums as the emotional focus.
• Channels: Prime-time TV (the X Factor slot on 2 November), video on demand, digital and PR.

Let’s Build is an emotional family film. Amsterdam agency WE ARE Pi told a story about a father and son discovering the creative potential of LEGO together. The ad builds humour from small domestic moments such as bedtime arguments and disliking Brussels sprouts.

Why it worked: It spoke to the decision-maker. The campaign was designed to move mum emotionally by showing the family bonding over play, and it ran where families watched together. The same era shows how broad LEGO’s brand work was: for The LEGO Movie, a UK ad break was recreated entirely in LEGO and delivered a return on marketing investment of 5.96 for Warner Bros.

LEGO’s Brand Collaborations and Partnership Campaigns

Collaborations are one of the clearest ways LEGO stands apart from other toy brands. But licensing and genuine co-marketing are different things, and it helps to keep them separate. A license puts someone else’s characters on LEGO sets. A partnership campaign builds shared media, events or content around both brands. For each collaboration below, we ask the same question: which new audience or moment is it trying to reach?

Entertainment and Franchise Partnerships

Entertainment themes carry real weight. Business Insider noted that Star Wars and Harry Potter were among LEGO’s best-selling themes in 2024, both popular with adults.

LEGO Dimensions, covered above, took the idea further by mixing 14 franchises in one game. The FIFA partnership sits in a similar space but goes beyond product: the official trophy set has 2,842 pieces, and the brand wrapped it in a film, events and school activations.

How Collaborations Help LEGO Reach New Audiences

The smartest part of LEGO’s partnership strategy is that each partner brings a different door into the brand:

• FIFA and the four footballers: football fans and families who may not visit the toy aisle.
• NASA: space and STEM fans, plus adults who want a display piece.
• Pharrell Williams: music, fashion and culture audiences. SoFi also lists Formula 1 among LEGO’s recent partnerships aimed at adults.
• Warner Bros. games: gamers who’d never browse a LEGO catalogue.

By matching each partner to a distinct audience, LEGO avoids a common trap: collaborations that just recycle the same fans.

Case: Pharrell Williams and Over the Moon (2024)

As you may know, this collaboration blends product design, film, PR and experiential marketing. Over the Moon (10391) is a 966-piece space shuttle. It includes seven minifigure skin tones, the widest range LEGO had put in a single product, and 51 minifigure heads, more than 30 of them new.

It’s tied to PIECE BY PIECE, a Pharrell biopic told through LEGO animation and directed by Morgan Neville. The Los Angeles experience, open for a single day, offered build spaces, a make-and-take minifigure zone, a custom-shirt area and a minifigure maker that also lives online. The partnership also extends to Pharrell’s non-profit YELLOW and a LEGO Build the Change challenge.

So, why is that collaboration so important for the marketing world? Actually, the product carried the values perfectly. Representation was built into the bricks, the film gave the collaboration cultural reach beyond the toy aisle, and the non-profit link added purpose. Williams framed it as a child playing with bricks who grew up to tell his own story in LEGO animation, which is exactly the nostalgia-to-creativity bridge the brand wants adults to cross.

Case: Mark Ronson X LEGO Bricks (2020)

In this 2019 extension of the LEGO Rebuild the World campaign, producer Mark Ronson turned the process of making a song into something you can almost see and touch.

In the recording studio, Ronson used LEGO bricks to represent the individual components of a song; a beat formed the foundation,then a bassline arrived. Chords and melody were layered on top. You can add, move, replace, or combine each piece with another, much like bricks in a LEGO build.

Ronson is also a smart choice for the LEGO target audience because his role does more than provide celebrity recognition. He has a credible relationship with creativity itself.

LEGO’s Experiential and Community Marketing Campaigns

Bricks are physical, so experiential marketing isn’t a stretch for LEGO.

Interactive Events and Pop-Up Experiences: Play Is Your Superpower (2024)

Play Is Your Superpower is a global campaign that localises through experiences.

In Paris, the free Superpower Studios gallery at La Gaîté Lyrique used timed booking slots and was led by Colette founder Sarah Andelman with artists Aurélia Durand, Chen Fenwan and Ekow Nimako. Creative agency Exposure partnered on it. In China, the campaign created what LEGO called the world’s most playable library, with three themed zones.

Why it worked: It took play to places adults rarely expect it. An art gallery and a library are serious spaces, so filling them with kids building things made the message visible. Supporting research gave it weight: 83% of parents see play as a way to celebrate differences, and 90% of kids aged 5 to 12 agree it’s the best way to learn and express themselves. The Paris spaces were colourful and built to be photographed, so visitors helped distribute the campaign.

Turning Consumers Into Campaign Participants

LEGO’s best experiential work puts participation at the centre. In Paris, children built LEGO “seeds” to grow a wish forest and an interactive Remix Room let visitors blend and repaint an artist’s work. In Belgium, classes competed to build their football dream, and the Bangkok event invited fans to add to a shared masterpiece. The principle is simple: when people make something, they become part of the campaign instead of an audience for it.

LEGO Ideas and Community-Led Marketing

LEGO Ideas is community-led marketing at its most structured. In its first ten years, more than a million members submitted over 26,000 product ideas, and 23 sets reached the shelves. Projects that gather 10,000 supporters get considered for production. That makes the community a product team, a marketing channel and a source of stories, all at once.

Connecting Physical Experiences With Digital Campaigns

LEGO usually gives every physical moment a digital doorway. The Le Florist truck tour came with a free online workshop led by florist Jeff Leatham for anyone who couldn’t visit.

The LEGO Botanicals Le Florist Flower Truck is touring the globe, celebrating all forms of love— from soulmates and besties, to favourite colleagues and self-lovers—on the back of a 51%’ surge in social media discussions around people feeling disconnected with their loved ones at the end of 2024.

The Pharrell experience’s minifigure maker also exists online. What’s more, the original Rebuild the World launch asked kids to share builds on the LEGO Life app. So, the pattern is worth copying: don’t let your event be only for the people who could attend.

How LEGO Uses Nostalgia and Adult-Focused Marketing

This is the section most useful to marketers outside the toy industry. LEGO has spent years learning how to sell something associated with childhood to people who are well past it.

Marketing LEGO to Adults

The market backs the strategy. Circana found that adults aged 18 and over bought $1.5 billion of toys from January to April 2024, overtaking the 3 to 5 age group as the biggest buyer segment, and that about 43% of adults had bought a toy for themselves in the past year.

LEGO’s response has been practical. Every set aimed at adult fans carries an 18+ tag and sits in more understated black packaging. Julia Goldin, Lego’s chief product and marketing officer, said regarding LEGO’s target market:

We decided to focus on adults because we realized that we had a much bigger opportunity than we were tapping into.

The 18+ labelling removes that excuse.

What’s more, Wall Street Journal evaluated LEGO’s addressing to adults as follows:

Lego has doubled the size of its range targeting people over the age of 18 since it launched in 2020, and has made a series of ads aimed at older builders with the slogan “Adults Welcome.” The best part from the company’s perspective? Adults will pay grown-up prices that kids could only dream of.

Now, LEGO has 142 sets designed for grown-ups.

Nostalgia as an Advertising Strategy

Nostalgia marketing is especially useful because LEGO can trigger it without trapping itself in the past.

An adult may recognize the building ritual from childhood while constructing a set based on a current film, Formula 1 car, botanical arrangement, architectural landmark, or gaming franchise.

In other words, the behavior can feel nostalgic even when the product does not.

LEGO Ideas explicitly uses this dynamic too. Its 2025 “Twist of Nostalgia” challenge asked people to reinterpret favorite childhood sets with modern ideas and generated more than 750 submissions.

For brands with long histories, that is a useful distinction. Nostalgia becomes more interesting when consumers can do something new with an old feeling.

LEGO Botanicals and Lifestyle-Oriented Campaigns: Le Florist (2024 to 2025)

As we mentioned above, Le Florist is a lifestyle campaign that combines experiential retail with influencer marketing. In the first phase, LEGO’s London store was rebuilt into a florist for Valentine’s Day under the “Keep It Fresh” idea with podcast hosts Jamie Laing and Sophie Habboo as creator partners.

In 2025 it became the Le Florist Flower Truck, visiting New York, Toronto, London, Paris, Milan, Hamburg and Amsterdam with free workshops, and built on a 51% rise in social conversation about people feeling disconnected from loved ones. Florist Jeff Leatham fronted an online workshop for those who couldn’t attend

It started from an honest insight, that most adults didn’t know LEGO made sets for them. Nowadays, a great number of “adults” buy Botanicals and even they do LEGO dates and share these sincere moments on social media (great UGC!):

@mariajoseavilaq

Cutest lego date & surprisingly easy to build 🌸 #legodate #legoflowerbouquet #cherryblossom #datenight

♬ original sound – The Two Lips

Turning Toys Into Collectibles and Gifts

Collectible and gift positioning relies on two things: an occasion and display value. The Icons Bouquet of Roses and Tiny Plants were among the most popular toys bought by adults, and The Daily Upside points to influencer-friendly $50 flower bouquets as romantic gifts.

The FIFA range does the same job for sport: the Ronaldo set includes a collectible plaque and hidden details.

Valentine’s Day and the World Cup give people a reason to buy now.

LEGO’s Digital and Social Media Marketing Campaigns

LEGO’s big brand ideas travel well online because they’re built around visuals, participation and short emotional beats. In this section, we will look at how the campaigns above move across platforms.

Video Storytelling and Digital Advertising

YouTube is LEGO’s long-form home. An agency partner that has managed the global channel since 2014 reports growth from 294,000 subscribers to 19.7 million, across more than 200 countries and 43 languages. The same source notes that YouTube and LEGO adopted COPPA guidelines for children’s content in 2019. The near three-minute Momoa film and the two-minute Holland film both show LEGO treating online video as a storytelling format, not a trailer slot.

Social Media Campaigns and Creative Content

The World Cup film shows what social-first launches can do, with Messi’s post alone reportedly reaching more than 180 million views in a day.

Bu gönderiyi Instagram'da gör

Leo Messi (@leomessi)'in paylaştığı bir gönderi

At the other end of the scale, the 2020 Let’s Build Together campaign existed to support families during lockdown rather than to sell. LEGO’s head of social studio said there was no strong commercial component, and that the team deliberately moved fast instead of producing a polished TV spot.

In January 2025 LEGO also launched @LEGOBuilds on Instagram, a channel for builders, to steer casual fans deeper into the hobby, alongside the main @LEGO account that had more than 11 million followers.

Influencer and Creator Collaborations

LEGO uses two kinds of creators:

• The first are celebrity Playmakers such as Holland and Momoa, who front big brand films.
• The second are creators with a real connection to the product or the story, like Hand Solo and the Le Florist partners.

The ecosystem is already huge: IZEA counted 283 million TikTok posts using the keyword Lego. When you work with creators on a kids’ product, remember that disclosure and age rules apply, which we cover in the audience section below.

User-Generated Content and Fan Communities

The most important digital idea in LEGO’s playbook is the chain from campaign idea to community. Here is how it plays out across four examples: