In-house marketing brings change to the LEGO Group

The LEGO Group has been speaking to a marketing magazine about bringing its efforts in-house.

A few years ago, the LEGO Group decided to use fewer external marketing companies and instead build an in-house agency to help reach its customers around the world. Chief Marketing Officer Julia Goldin has been in post for four years, and discussed her approach with Marketing Week.

She explained the benefits of having the marketing team in-house. “The [in-house team] provides two things. One is complete integration – same goals, same agenda, the ability to solve problems very quickly, much greater learning across the organisation. And most importantly what that leads to is they are more agile and responsive to the marketplace.

“For example, if you have an asset that is not working, or we need an additional asset because we have a product that is super popular and we want to develop something else, we can do that very quickly – move the resources or address the problem.”

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It means that instead of being judged against specific metrics, the marketing team is judged on the number of children reached, productivity, talent development and being part of the LEGO Group’s overall strategy.

“Their success is the full product experience, not just the success of their ad,” Goldin told Marketing Weekly. “We don’t put the KPIs in the same way a client would to an agency. As a client to an external agency we can’t tell them ‘I would like your success to be tied to my overall growth’ because the agency will say, ‘I don’t have influence over sales or product’.

“Secondly, externally the agencies look at their own margins and how much they charge the client, how many hours they dedicated to the project. That is not what our agencies are rewarded on – getting more out of the client. They are reward on being more productive.”

The LEGO Group has a very specific culture, which is challenging for making big changes, but Goldin has brought in marketing professionals with both agency and digital backgrounds. “We have now come to a point where we are really active to the new wave of growth. It doesn’t have to be supernatural we just want to make sure we are reaching more kids and we stay relevant and engaging. That creates a lot of hunger in the organisation. We are really focused on ensuring we can harness the creativity and the potential in our people.”

Author Profile

Graham
Graham was the BrickFanatics.com Editor up until November 2020. He has plenty of experience working on LEGO related projects. He has contributed to various websites and publications on topics including niche hobbies, the toy industry and education.

Follw Graham on Twitter @grahamh100.

Graham

Graham was the BrickFanatics.com Editor up until November 2020. He has plenty of experience working on LEGO related projects. He has contributed to various websites and publications on topics including niche hobbies, the toy industry and education. Follw Graham on Twitter @grahamh100.

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