LEGO CEO says the company is ‘an entertainment brand’ – and Disney is its role model
The CEO of the LEGO Group says the company now considers itself ‘an entertainment brand’, closer in scope and ambition to Disney than traditional toy rivals.
Historically, the LEGO Group’s closest competitors have been toy brands like Mattel and Hasbro. But the brick now dwarfs both of those rivals in revenues – compare the LEGO Group’s net profits last year of $1.9bn to Mattel’s ($390m) and Hasbro’s ($200m) – and the company’s CEO Niels B. Christiansen says the brand has a new role model: Disney.
“We have to look at ourselves as an entertainment brand,” Christiansen told the Financial Times. “Our brand characteristics are much more like Disney, the brand strengths are much more like Disney than any more traditional toy competitor.”
It’s not difficult to see how Christiansen has drawn the parallel between the LEGO Group and Disney: the Danish brand has long had its own theme parks (even if, for a while, they weren’t under the direct control of the company), while it also has its own cinematic universe (The LEGO Movie, The LEGO Batman Movie et al) and is broadening its outlook to the metaverse in a partnership with Epic Games.
All these arms of the brand position the LEGO Group further away from its traditional rivals (although Mattel’s Barbie movie may give it the boost it needs to begin catching up), and further towards global brand powerhouses like Apple, Google and Samsung. Brand Finance named the LEGO Group the world’s seventh-strongest brand in 2021 (two places ahead of Disney), while RepTrak hailed it as the world’s most reputable brand once again in 2023.
Meanwhile, the company has comfortably claimed the crown of the most valuable toy brand in the world – according to Brand Finance – for nine years in a row. And with that kingdom well and truly conquered, it makes sense for the LEGO Group to position Disney as a role model. Statista suggests the Danish brand still has some way to go to rival the House of Mouse, though: Disney’s brand value in 2022 was a staggering $57bn, while the LEGO Group’s was ‘just’ $11.8bn.
“Disney is so much bigger than the LEGO Group – and that’s a huge opportunity,” added David Robertson, author of the independently-published Brick by Brick, which charts the LEGO Group’s initial rise, early-‘00s fall and ultimate rise again. “The LEGO Group can pick and choose how [it goes] after that. You start with this small plastic brick company, and now you have movies, theme parks, digital – someday it could be as big as Disney.”
That certainly seems to be the ethos with which fourth-generation LEGO Group owner Thomas Kirk Kristiansen – who succeeded his father Kjeld in May this year – is hoping to grow the company. “My father always said we are more than a toy company,” he told the Financial Times. “Everyone has always said: ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you are a toy company.’ But I think the potential and the idea are about so much more.”
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